Pat Williams - July 19, 2005
Indian Education For All
PAT WILLIAMS
MPR COMMENTARY
JULY 19, 2005
In addition to commentaries such as this one for Montana Public Radio, I write a regular column for daily and weekly newspapers in some states of the Rocky Mountain West.
One of my most recent columns was about the many contributions of Native Americans to the art, clothing, language, governance — the culture of this country.
Indian influences surround us and, yet, we seem sightless in our recognition of them. Do we know, for example, that almost half the states in America have names derived from Indian words or that many of our most commonly used words are from Indian languages including: pecan, hickory, chipmunk, moose, raccoon, and hundreds of others.
Indians introduced many of our favorite foods: corn, squash, potatoes, peanuts, vanilla, pumpkins, and avocados. Implements that are important here in the West, from canoes to snowshoes to fishhooks, came from Indians. Many historians agree that lacrosse, baseball, and the rubber ball were adopted from Indian games.
Most Americans, including, I suppose, some Indian citizens, do not realize that many of the fraternal organizations that are purely American were first adopted from the themes and structures of Native American groups. These include the Knights of Pythias, the Odd Fellows, college fraternities and sororities. The Boy Scouts were originally patterned after similar Indian youth groups.
As our country becomes evermore deeply involved in the war in Iraq, it should at least be of interest to us that our military learned many of the house-to-house guerilla warfare tactics from Native Americans more than two hundred years ago. Our early colonists learned that the native people fought wars using the same strategies they employed when hunting: stealth, surprise, decoys, calls, and encirclement. Using the early Indian style of fighting, Americans won our freedom from the far more powerful British Empire.
In very meaningful ways, native people are also responsible for the design of America’s government. Our founders, most notably Benjamin Franklin, according to his own words, arrived at the idea of “a union of American colonies” and eventually a united states from the governance ideas of the “League of the Five Iroquois Nations.” Our United States Congress is also patterned after a governance body first developed by Indians.
Here in Montana, we have embarked on a serious effort to educate ourselves—but more important, our children—about the many critical contributions of Indians to the cultural fabric that is America. It is called Indian Education for All. Our courts have ruled that it is required by the 1972 Montana Constitution. Our teachers and administrators should welcome this opportunity to finally, finally learn about how we Americans truly became who we are.
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