Check Your Sources...

...especially if they're "Indian legends." Many, or perhaps most "Indian legends" aren't actually Indian stories. The post is really worth reading in full, because it discusses how to find out what stories are authentic, why it matters, and how it all relates to colonialism - all of which is relevant to research methods as well.

Authentic indigenous stories come from a different cultural context than you may be familiar with. That should be obvious, but I think that it bears noting. If you go into these stories expecting to have your cultural beliefs and norms reinforced, you’re dong it wrong. Trite western moral lessons are not going to be handed to you in our stories.

Listening to or reading authentic aboriginal stories means you are accessing different cultures. Please don’t forget that. And the next time someone tells you a “Native American” saying or story, ask yourself if it resonates with you because it’s really “indigenous wisdom”…or if it’s just a western story wrapped up in a cloak of indigeneity.

Mascots

Here are the links I mentioned:

Native Appropriations blog post about mascots, focused on the scientific research on their effects and with links to the studies and further resources.

Native Appropriations blog post about mascots, more focused on her personal plea as a Native person.

If you want to comment on her posts, feel free to do so, but remember that there is a real person writing those posts, and it is an issue very close to her. She has had some posts where the comments have gone from disagreeing to personal attacks, so please comment respectfully.

Wikipedia And Its Discontents

If you are used to using Wikipedia for research, you should read this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education,, which is written by a well-regarded published scholar who's written two books on the Haymarket Riot and yet could not get Wikipedia to acknowledge the many errors in its coverage of that event because "One of the people who had assumed the role of keeper of this bit of history for Wikipedia quoted the Web site's 'undue weight' policy, which states that 'articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views.' He then scolded me. 'You should not delete information supported by the majority of sources to replace it with a minority view.'"

The scholar was deleting incorrect information and replacing it with correct information, but was again scolded by Wikipedia editors: "My [next attempt at] improvement lasted five minutes before a Wiki-cop scolded me, 'I hope you will familiarize yourself with some of Wikipedia's policies, such as verifiability and undue weight. If all historians save one say that the sky was green in 1888, our policies require that we write "Most historians write that the sky was green, but one says the sky was blue." ... As individual editors, we're not in the business of weighing claims, just reporting what reliable sources write.'"

In other words, Wikipedia gives you majority viewpoints, even when new research proves that the majority is actually wrong. Peer-reviewed scholarly journals function in the opposite way: They require authors to be aware of the most recent research, even (or especially) when it shows that previous research was wrong, because they do not want to repeat the errors of previous scholarship.

State of Indian Education Speech

National Indian Education Association (NIEA) President Quinton Roman Nose gives the 2012 State of Indian Education address, which begins with personal history and the boarding schools and goes on to talk about contemporary issues in Indian education.

Educational Divide Growing Between Rich and Poor

Today's New York Times reports on the growing educational gap between rich and poor Americans:

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

The article includes links to several studies, so it's a good place to start if you are interested in these issues.

Menominee Language Issue

Here are the links for the Menominee language controversy:

NBC coverage, including video of interview with Washinawatok family and a link to the school's letter.

Coverage in Indian Country Today, with discussion of what happens after the CYA letter.

Editorial from NBC Latino by Esther Cepeda, about the fear that monolingual Americans may have about being in a multilingual environment.

ABC coverage, including quotes from tribal chairman and students at the Menominee tribal school in Neopit.

Initial coverage in the Shawano Leader, with a final paragraph that basically makes Esther Cepeda's point about the fear of multilingualism.