When teaching the history of the Americas what begins the topic of Native Americans?

[Kalis]

Every now and then we had an Australian history module, holy shit that was a dreary waste of time.

Nobody knew it existed, nobody knew it existed, nobody knew it existed, nobody knew it existed, nobody knew it existed, nobody knew it existed, strewth this is new, bloody abos, penal colony, Sir Don Bradman, Kylie & Jason, Shane Warne.

Pretty much covered it.

[Icuren]

depended on the history.

US history we learned about the first encounters w/ natives and the genocides and other awful things.

If world history then we learned about the land bridge.

[Sky High]

I was taught that they migrated here some thousand years ago. not much on them besides the indian wars. Wyoming being the state where most of the big name battles happend afterall.

[Flutterguy]

It's divided up over the years. When you're really it's a very general overview of big events. Then as you progress through the grades, it gets more detailed.

We covered some of the old empires in the Americas before European migration. Then you cover conquistadors and all that before colonization, French-Indian War, Revolution, Slavery, etc.

[Theodarzna]

Depends on the scope, btw. You said you friend was working on a JC lesson? How much information do you actually expect to be able to convey?

She is fine with it, I just found all the possible course material had this odd emphasis on the "The Land Bridge!" then 1492 happens and not a lot of in-between.

- - - Updated - - -

So you're not pretending? You're... this is serious? You seriously made that analogy? You think that the jews - a completely peaceful people from your own culture that's entirely integrated into your society - being (attempted) genocided within a generation because some jews killed a guy almost 2000 years ago, is essentially the same as the native americans - an extremely violent and primitive culture that constantly tried to kill everyone that got close to them - being slowly worn down over 400 years of rubbing up against western immigrants, with the vast majority of the deaths being both unintentional and inevitable (as contact between the continents would eventually happen) through disease?

Yeah, I'm sure you've spend a lot of time objectively analyzing this...

Clearly the poor, disorganized immigrants fleeing famine and persecution from a dozen different countries in europe were coming to america in droves to risk heir lives genociding entire indian nations; not to get a piece of land to make a life on. The indians just weren't very interested in sharing that land, even when they cultivated it so poorly that the european settlers couldn't even tell that the land was claimed to begin with. Simultaneously, they were so lacking in strength that they couldn't even hold the land they laid claim to against these weak immigrants, possibly because they were too busy dying from the diseases they were catching.

Then they engaged in other genius behaviours, like raiding settlements on land that they hadn't even claimed because they had a retarded honor culture that made them derive worth from doing shit like killing people who weren't members of their tribe to prove themselves, abducting women, stealing horses (a capital offense, incidentally), and a whole bunch of other crap.

Then finally, once they realized that they were actually in trouble and sometimes managed to get over their seething mutual hatred and distrust for one another, they joined a bunch of wars on the side of the losers.

Ultimately, the native americans were doomed from the start. The only hope for their civilization was that their few survivors would carve out a niche for themselves, but sadly for them they bet on the wrong horse at the end and got fucked there as well. They should go down in history as testament to the irresistibility of biological determinism.

I find a curious underlying argument being, "They were primitive, rustic savages, so really we did nothing wrong."

Sometime between Sumeria and the Norman Conquest this rhetorical device emerged, I am now more curious how and why. One book in fact even implies "These people never even domesticated chickens and horses or cows." ignoring that such livestock animals were nonexistent in the Americas. Or that without such animals the natives enjoyed a relatively pristine period of health do to a lack of great poxs jumping species.

[Deleted]

I just find the narrative odd. Perhaps it is just my eyes, but it remarkably de-Natives them, implying that they were "but the first wave of people to come here."

but that's exactly who they were , the first people that emigrated to the Americas

and then the Europeans also came and they won

[Theodarzna]

Are you certain that multiculturalism is really some sinister government conspiracy and not, you know, just a natural reaction to white culture being boring as shit?

I am not certain this is the proper thread for you to discuss which culture you find to be superior or inferior.

- - - Updated - - -

but that's exactly who they were , the first people that emigrated to the Americas

and then the Europeans also came and they won

Since my friend is to be teaching a college level course I felt maybe she should switch the historiography/narrative approach SINCE the students likely have never encountered a new narrative.

The nasty bits that happened between 1491-Today get marginalized, and the full scope of particularly the epidemic and its effects on society are a rather interesting approach to take.

[enragedgorilla]

Land Bridge, Migratory tribes some eventually settled into certain areas with fairly large geographical territories .
In HS we covered migration of South American groups into California,Texas etc. but I will be buggered if I can recall the specifics.
That was more to cover the "cultures in conflict" aspect of North America vs. South America so I am not sure it was really detailed beyond,"yup they came here ".

[Deleted]

Things I learned about native americans in school:
-they crossed the Bering straight at a time when N America and Asia were united there
-formed some empires south, Inca, Aztec and Maya, tribes in North
-thousands of years later, Colombus got there along with other Spanish, British, Portuguese and French "explorers". They brought plague and conquest.
The END.

That's really all I learned about them, the Disney movie Pocahontas was more relevant I think than all I learned in school about Native Americans.

I learned more later on my own but generally in school we didn't learn much about Native Americans. We learned about my country's history and European History with a few mentions for other continents/nations.

[Annoying]

Ours started with Navajo history, as there's a large portion of Navajo here.

Specifically, it started with a discussion on their early hunter/gatherer era, and about their adaptation to crop farming that the Pueblo people brought to them.

We ended up going over the entire history including the Bering straight, as well as the Spanish conquests and such, but we started much more locally.

[Theodarzna]

but that's exactly who they were , the first people that emigrated to the Americas

and then the Europeans also came and they won

Won is a curious statement when technically a germ killed most.

[HeroZero]

I was taught that they migrated here some thousand years ago. not much on them besides the indian wars. Wyoming being the state where most of the big name battles happend afterall.

"Battles" might be a strong word in many circumstances.

On topic, My memories have to do with learning about the plains indians first and learning about how they made their tools and lived. Their origins were not brought up till after 3rd grade. We also had a whole cool "day on the Prairie" Field trip to go sit in some teepee's and do scavenger hunt type thing relating to the native americans. To be honest there isn't any talk about the ''unpleasantness" that followed their interaction till a few years later but it was pretty thoroughly covered. Heck we even had a school wide writing event in regards to s novel that i THINK had events with the trail of tears (can;t remember the author or the title). Even later in 5th-6th grade we had available a week long field trip to the four corners area to learn about the Anasazi and other pueblo indian groups.

There is certainly some ugly stuff in the past but even seeing some of the terrible things we have done to them (just using a generalization) and what some of their tribal groups did to each other were all covered in my school from 3rd grade to 6th grade for the most part.