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native americans

Democracy

187 years after the House said it'd seat a member of the Cherokee Nation, it may finally happen

We can't break another promise.

via Wikimedia Commons

Cherokee Nation Vice President of Government Relations Kimberly Teehee in 2019.

One hundred and eighty-seven years ago, the United States government promised the Cherokee Nation a seat in the House of Representatives as part of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. A minority group of Cherokee leaders signed the treaty, forcing the tribe to give up its ancestral land and relocate west of the Mississippi River.

The treaty was unpopular with a majority of tribe members and when they were slow to move, they were forced out of their homeland. This resulted in more than 4,000 Cherokee people dying during the forced relocation that became known as the “Trail of Tears.”

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Education & Information

Assignments that prompt students to empathize with those who committed atrocities need to go

Jennifer C. Martin/Twitter

An assignment on the Trail of Tears has prompted debate about taking historical perspectives.

Helping young people understand the causes and effects of historical events is a formidable task for any educator. History isn't just "what happened and when." There's also a "why," "how" and "who" in every historical happening, and quality history education helps students explore those questions.

Sometimes, however, that exploration can go off the rails.

Most people would agree that understanding different perspectives is an important part of learning history, but there are more and less problematic ways of helping students gain that understanding. We've seen some of the more problematic methods pop up in school assignments before, from asking students to pick cotton like slaves to listing the pros and cons of slavery.

Now an assignment from a school in Georgia is making the rounds, with people calling out issues with the perspective it asked students to take.

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education
Heroes

Montana's Blackfeet Tribe has gifted hundreds of COVID vaccines to its Canadian neighbors

via Wikimedia Commons

Native Americans have been especially hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Montana, Native Americans account for 6.6% of the population but are 17% of the state's total COVID-19 cases.

The Blackfeet Nation Reservation in northwestern Montana is no exception. The reservation is home to just under 10,000 people but in less than a year, it recorded a total of 1,3838 COVID-19 cases.

At the pandemic's height, there were 390 cases of the virus on the reservation and the number tripled over just 10 days. The tribe lost 47 members to the virus.

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native americans
Education & Information

The Oregon Trail game got a revamp with more authentic Native American representation

Gameloft/Twitter

Anyone who came of age during the late 80's and early 90s is at least somewhat familiar with The Oregon Trail game. As one of the most popular computer-based video games of all time, it's a well-loved classic for late Gen Xers and early Millennials.

The game was designed to be educational, to teach kids about the Lewis & Clark expedition and westward expansion of the United States in the mid-1800s. Players were part of a wagon train traveling out west, encountering various challenges and pitfalls along the way, including the dreaded dysentery that led to countless players' demise.

Kids loved it. But unfortunately, not all of its lessons were accurate. In fact, the representation of Native Americans in the game perpetuated common stereotypes and myths about the Indigenous people of the time. Even one of the co-creators of the original game has said in recent years that it should have included a Native perspective.

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