As America settles into yet another Thanksgiving Holiday-Black-Friday-Sale-Extravaganza, some of us ask ourselves, how are Indigenous American children to understand a holiday which commemorates the betrayal of their ancestors’ generosity? Everywhere we see the signs of animosity towards immigrants posturing as the official policy of the state. This year alone over 5,000 migrant unaccompanied minors have been imprisoned every month. What horrors or desperation are they fleeing from that could be greater than the nightmare they have now been condemned to by the global beacon of liberty? After abolishing Columbus Day in Los Angeles, will the Thanksgiving Holiday get a free pass?
Four hundred years have nearly passed since the first immigrants stumbled, starving upon the east coast. Are the sins of the settlers forgivable? Are they even remembered by the descendants and inheritors of those sins? Not really, I was recently reminded by a top state education authority. To Americans, the Thanksgiving holiday has no historical meaning anymore. One should wonder why. In the fifth grade, California students are supposed to learn about, “the creation of a new nation that would be peopled by immigrants from all parts of the globe and governed by institutions influenced by a number of religions, the ideals of the Enlightenment, and concepts of self-government.” Thus the state’s omissions, obfuscations and outright misrepresentations of history not only confuse students about basic moral values and human rights, but encode the American psyche and ideology to believe that that ends always justify the means, and even when they don’t, there is no turning back. History, students learn, is about the past not the present. California is so far from actually teaching Indigenous truths in schools through its otherwise high-stakes standards that the legislature had to mandate the development of a Native American studies model curriculum with which to "encourage" school districts and charter schools "to offer a course of study in Native American studies" as an ELECTIVE in grades 9-12.
California’s History and Social Studies Framework for public schools explains that, “For a time, Indian nations and European settlers coexisted. Native peoples served as independent traders and mediators. European settlement brought the American Indian population a more diverse selection of food and introduced new tools for hunting and warfare. This coexistence was short-lived, however. Broken treaties, skirmishes, and massacres increasingly came to characterize the relationship between the groups. Students may consider these questions: Why did American Indians fight with each other? Why did they fight with European settlers?” How complicated this period of history must be to those who seek to whitewash the bloody roots of invasion, massacres and genocide. A critical mind instead might wonder, how can we expect students to find salvation for the settlers between their practices of slavery and the savagery of invasions? The first question posed is the one intended to absolve the settlers of their sins because in good public schools, we learn that, “The presence of the Europeans exacerbated historical tensions,” that already existed among Indigenous nations prior to the arrival of the settlers. The continent was no Eden, on the contrary, the “merciless savages” had been at each other's throats since time immemorial, therefore, the lawlessness of the savage was righteously tamed by the lawful and pure Christian, albeit imperfect, settlers.
At Anahuacalmecac, students are free from this type of brainwashing. While hundreds of educators might claim to provide critical perspectives in their classrooms across the state, the fact that an entire community has fought to protect this small example of freedom of thought and intellectual autonomy as a community for almost two decades against all odds is remarkable. LAUSD, even in its recommendation to renew the charter of Anahuacalmecac, is in fact seeking to chain the community to its bureaucracy. Freedom is fickle, especially in the United States. Our hope is that enough Indigenous families across the city and state remember what our ancestors fought and were killed for. Let it not be a shadow of our selves that ultimately betrays our paths towards self-determination. When public schools are left untethered from the communities they are supposed to serve they are nothing more than modern missions manufacturing consent for today’s oppressive realities and sins of the state.
Beyond the renewal of Anahuacalmecac’s charter, Semillas calls upon the LAUSD and the State Boards of Education adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the specific measures which address the needs of Indigenous children and families so as to advance towards a more meaningful solution to both the immediate negative impacts of existing curricula, policies, pedagogies and the historic damages of boarding and other compulsory educational governmental models of schooling. Beyond reactionary schooling models, innovative educational designs based upon Indigenous languages, knowledges and visions of humanity and community autonomy over these will more truly prepare Indigenous children for the 21st century. In gratitude, we acknowledge that we too, must be good ancestors, honorable and true to our original instructions. This is why we are inalienably indigenous to this continent toaltepechahchan SemAnawak.
To learn more about thanks-taking:
National Day of Mourning Article:
AB 738: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB738
Burn your villages to the ground (ATCR)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qnGnj_e6gBw
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qnGnj_e6gBw
(Or just watch the Addams Family Values)
To support Anahuacalmecac please visit our website: www.AIUPWorldSchool.org
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