[RSCT] Curriculum Resources for Alternative Views on Columbus Day

[BBPDX at aol.com]

  In a message dated 10/12/09 7:00:48 AM, katheriq at umflint.edu writes:

> Do you know of any children's literature that tells an honest story-
> possibly from the perspective of the indigenous peoples?
> 
Hi Katherine and all,

In Rethinking Columbus, I review some of the better, more multicultural 
children's Columbus/Taino books that came out after 1992. All of these are 
problematic, but there are some that are more helpful than others. Jane Yolen's 
book, "Encounter," attempts to tell the Columbus-Taino story from the 
standpoint of a Taino boy. The most helpful thing about the book is simply that it 
makes a sincere effort to turn the story on its head and to watch the 
so-called discovery from the standpoint of the "discovered." "Encounter" has its 
own problems, as I discuss in the article ("Good Intentions Are Not 
Enough"), but it's a helpful effort. Another is Michael Dorris' "Morning Girl," a 
book that is set in a Taino community in the summer of 1492, and so takes 
Europeans off center stage. Francine Jacobs' "The Tainos" is the only children's 
book that I know of that attempts to explore Taino culture -- but again, 
with its own biases, as I discuss in Rethinking Columbus.

The Associated Press just published a piece on how Columbus is being taught 
in schools these days: 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091011/ap_on_re_us/us_teaching_columbus. The article suggests that in some schools, kids are 
learning a more complex version of Columbus: "In Texas, students start learning in 
the fifth grade about the 'Columbian Exchange' — which consisted not only 
of gold, crops and goods shipped back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, 
but diseases carried by settlers that decimated native populations." I presume 
that this refers to the awful 2008 5th grade Houghton Mifflin Social 
Studies textbook, which has a section on the Columbian Exchange. Notice how all 
the bad consequences of Spanish conquest are the fault of diseases "carried by 
settlers," not colonialism itself. This textbook focuses on the "exchange" 
between Tainos and Europeans -- i.e., "they" got horses and "we" got corn. 
In trying to avoid the "Columbus discovers America" myth, it embraces another 
myth: that what matters is all the stuff that got shared as a result of 
Columbus's voyage. I'm out of town, and don't have my copy in front of me, so 
can't give an exact quote, but the textbook even talks about how, as a result 
of this "exchange," we can now enjoy spicy food. The book fails to discuss 
the nature of Spanish colonialism in the Americas, the impact of these 
policies on Native peoples or the beginning of the African slave trade. It's a 
wretched book and ought to be critiqued by social justice teachers and 
community members, as the Social Studies Task Force in Milwaukee has done.

I'd encourage other teachers to post to the critical teaching listserv if 
you have ideas/adaptations for alternative ways to teach Columbus and the 
Tainos. And I'd encourage folks to revisit Rethinking Columbus: 
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/publication/columbus.

Best,

Bill Bigelow
Rethinking Schools
www.rethinkingschools.org
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