Native American cultural history and the new curriculum for the United Kingdom

Returning the Gaze. Assiniboine dancer Kevin Haywahe
with face paint. © Jeff Thomas

In the wake of the announcement that the curriculum in the United Kingdom has been reworked to be tougher to compete with international school standards, it strikes me as interesting that qualitatively not enough has changed at all in terms of the subject history. The new curriculum will focus on essay writing skills, mathematical modelling, problem solving and computer programming. Of major interest to me are the proposed changes to the history curriculum, which will focus a stronger emphasis on British leaders and present a chronology of British history from the Stone Age to 1066 to primary school students (with further British history supplemented in secondary education).

These changes have proved controversial amongst UK teachers and the public alike who criticize the Education Secretary Michael Gove for dumbing down history, boring pupils with the proposed chronological presentation of history, and presenting a compressed timeline within which to implement these changes by September 2014. I find it more strange that there hasn't been more clamour about the lack of world history, which was originally promised by Gove, so that UK schools could truly incorporate international learning.

As a product of primary and secondary education in the US, I grew up with a lack of world history exposure and was largely taught national history in terms of a chronological stream of events devoid from their deeper political contexts with the wider world. It wasn't until I attended university that I learned about cross cultural histories and the deeper involvement of America as a product of a much more complicated history, where divisions of power largely silenced Native American and other indigenous group histories. The example of Native American history is only one aspect of how other cultural histories can be overlooked in the national curriculum, and it is important that these stories are valued and presented.

In the travelling UK exhibition ‘Warriors of the Plain: 200 years of Native North American ritual and honour’, exhibition themes focus on Plains Indians and their living culture that is supported by a continued history of warrior traditions. Despite some very well presented, beautiful and interesting objects of warrior cultural ceremony displayed in this British Museum travelling exhibition, I think that one of the main reasons this exhibition has been successful on its national tour has been the lack of familiarity that audiences have with Native American history generally and their appreciation for learning these stories.

Fancy Dance pow-wow regalia made by Denis Zotigh, Kiowa 

Back of pow-wow regalia above

The objects seen from the 1800s would be highly unfamiliar to the average secondary school student in the UK and adults who did not focus on subjects in anthropology in university. I don’t think the change to the curriculum in the UK needs to focus on the actual way history is taught, as much as it would be much more useful and progressive to incorporate diverse world perspectives into history education. I feel that the Warriors exhibition highlights the need for a wider geographic and historic breadth that students should become familiar with from an earlier age. In such a globally connected world, it’s very sad that knowledge of different places and cultures in history are still not being emphasized as important in equal standing with national history.

'Warriors of the Plains' is currently at the Manchester Museum, and is open until 3 November 2013.  Introduction video to the Warriors of the Plains exhibition