Challenges in Navigating the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of American History.
In our digital world of conflicting information and opinions, it’s important to do our own research and speak up when things don’t add up.
PBS is often seen as a reliable educational resource, which is why I was concerned when, days before the 4th of July, they released “The Independence Day History They Don’t Teach You: How America’s Foundation was Built on Propaganda”, produced by Mahebe Media. This video preaches that America’s foundation was built on hardly more than genocide and associated propaganda while also claiming that our governmental systems mainly derived from Native societies. These questionable and conflicting claims lean away from proper context or nuance and also overlook the unique, complex, and successful aspects of our modern American nation. Journalistic standards for productions like this mirror those in education: accuracy, fairness, responsibility, courage, etc. Educators and journalists alike carry the burden of upholding these challenging standards as leaders in fields aimed at being sacred endeavors of truth-seeking and ethics teaching for a complex and controversial world.
Let’s begin with the introductory theme and crux of the video: “Can a national identity built on the erasure of Native genocide ever fully separate itself from propaganda?” This framing suggests that America is built mainly on genocide and associated lies, rather than the more complex reality of colonial war and conquest. Whereas genocide typically focuses on large-scale extermination, conquest usually involves both war and treaties, trading or the purchasing of land. The bad and ugly parts of this history shouldn’t be erased, rather they should be put in an appropriately broad context. We must consider the limits of our present-day perspectives and the reality that an ugly history is often an incomplete story. This oversimplified understanding of genocide vs. conquest occurs throughout the video, such as its portrayal of the Indian Wars. The narrow perspective ignores examples of justice and reparations for Native people and several other founding realities–such as the Founders’ pursuit of liberty–that are fundamental aspects of the “American Identity” worth highlighting and defending.
As the video progresses, the producers make a variety of claims regarding the Founding Principles and social systems of the U.S.: “America often frames democracy as one of its greatest achievements. The irony of it is that Natives were the ones to inspire it.” It is inaccurate to claim that Native people were the primary inspiration for American democracy , or that America brands itself as “the global founder” that “invented democracy”. There certainly were beneficial Native influences that are too often overlooked, but it remains wildly incomplete to ignore the important people and commonly established influences beyond Native people that draw on generations of equally valuable experience and deep debate.
In a related instance, the producers claim that: “When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he did not have Black or Native Americans in that vision.” More accurately, Jefferson’s original vision of the Declaration specifically included an anti-slavery component. This component was ultimately omitted to appease the colonies with the intent to create a more unified and hopefully improving nation. The Declaration and Constitution were written intentionally as ideals to be achieved over time rather than a finalized statement of progress. This long, slow march of progress has continued to manifest in remarkable ways that make America today a beacon of hope for many minds, hearts, and hands the world over. As a result, our imperfect Founders should be appropriately honored for their significant virtue and positive contributions. Secondly, Native people’s lack of inclusion in founding visions occurs mainly because they were involved in their own complex wars and diplomatic efforts. Many tribes wanted to maintain national or tribal sovereignty as any nation under threat would.
The Founders’ understanding of liberty is further critiqued: “I guess to them, liberty means freedom to embark on brutal invasions and occupation of Indigenous lands.” Upon further exploration we see the Founders’ philosophical and practical regard for liberty was significantly deeper as peoples who themselves were running from oppression. It must also be acknowledged that “brutal invasions and occupation[s]” were not uncommon and also conducted by Native people towards each other and their territories. Cycles of competition and cooperation are the norm throughout human history—an unfortunate aspect of our shared humanity. Ironically, the first example of Native conquest my research provided was the Haudenosaunee Confederacy during the Beaver Wars in fairly recent colonial times. This is the same confederacy celebrated in the video despite it being a largely undesirable moment in Native history that remained inadequately explored by the video. Despite the controversial history of the time, the narrator takes pride in stating his heritage as part of the Mohawk Nation and Haudenosaunee Confederacy, while simultaneously insinuating that the American national identity and pride is problematic despite having a similarly controversial history. A blatant double standard. Building on these observations, we reach some limits of the term “ancestral homelands.” Although at times, tribes forcefully or violently took territories from each other, including in fairly recent history, some still refer to these gains as ancestral homelands, which may be particularly problematic for some Land Acknowledgments. While we can’t turn back the clock, we can recognize that conquest is an undesirable part of many of our histories, and that today’s world would benefit most from a focus on our most practical options for moving forward united.
Exploring assimilation, the video features the phrase “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”, a slogan tied to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. This phrase was not literally intended to mean “kill Natives to save colonists”, but rather it was a poorly executed effort to help create better social navigation in the increasingly dominant but often challenging new colonial culture. The hope was to avoid further conflict and distrust. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School is often conveyed as simply an inhumane or nefarious endeavor, but in its time, it had the support of some tribal leaders and mixed success in aiding some Native POWs and others in navigating the profound and fast-developing societal differences of the time. Despite this, it should be simultaneously acknowledged that the school resulted in confusion, despair, and significant hardship for many others. The ethics and realities of assimilation are challenging, but are also a feature of our common humanity. Moving forward, this dual understanding of assimilation in American history and a focus on seeking reciprocal respect, support, and the honoring of differing cultures will be most beneficial to us all.
Overall, there are myriad polarizing claims of truth and converse accusations of propaganda or lying throughout the video, for example: “As always, U.S. propaganda gets in the way of the truth”. Absolute claims like this do not promote healthy discourse or give credence to good faith efforts at representing history. We need to remember that with such statements there are often fingers pointing back at us.
In reflection, the producers brought up many important overlooked points, but an opportunity to promote a more solid and healthy representation of these important, intricate, controversial topics, alongside the time-tested virtues of America was also squandered. As an educator, I worry that videos like this may find their way into the classroom and further damage already declining rates of historical and civic literacy. Journalism and education alike can unfortunately be biased from many angles surrounding American and Native American history. But while American history has seen no shortage of bias, it must be maintained that replacing one revisionist history with another isn’t the answer. Such stark representations may instead create misunderstanding, confusion, distrust, or even resentment, while stunting efforts towards progress for all parties. Left unchecked, misinformation and revisionist narratives can be damaging to how people understand and act in the world, including in this case, by relying too heavily on oversimplified binaries of good vs. bad or right vs. wrong. What results is an undermining of people’s confidence in respectable virtues and systems, and a failure to understand the world in the context of both our diversity and common humanity…for better and worse.
A couple of important but also challenging remedies for this are to focus on informational literacy and intellectual humility by taking the time to be intellectually and emotionally open to the complex facts, circumstances, and ethics of the world. Overall, everyone should muster courage and responsibility to speak up in their arenas. We should be careful to leverage this truly fragile but very important opportunity for understanding and progress through healthy cycles of dialogue, debate, agreement, acknowledgment, and action.
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