Learning from the people part 1

On Friday and Saturday evenings there is an educational bonfire held down by the river banks. The program consists of cultural lectures, traditional storytelling, dancing, an intermission where kids (and adults) can roast marshmallows, and plenty of opportunities for asking questions. This program is open to anyone who wants to stop by and there is no charge for anything.

One of the guys that works at the Village, Freddy, takes part in the bonfire as a component of a group called the Warriors of AniKituwha. He and his wife invited me to attend the bonfire Friday night and I happily obliged. The following is a clip from the bonfire lectures that I put together from recordings on my phone. It was night so there was no visual and I simply added a few pictures from around the village.

A basic rundown of the clip:

From the beginning of the clip to about a minute and 53 seconds into the clip Sonny is talking about one of the two times that he tried to move away from the reservation. From 1:54 until about 3:08 he talks about his father’s experience at an all-male Indian boarding school. From 3:09 until the end of the clip he is talking about some of the ways that history as it relates to Native Americans has been perceived by different people. He discusses some of the research that has been done by Native Americans about that history and how that research is conducted.

Below you will find some quotes that I pulled from the clip and a little bit of reflection on the quotes from my perspective. After the bonfire I stuck around to ask a few follow-up questions about some of these things so some of that additional information is addressed here as well.

“After a while, this [constantly teaching about Cherokee culture] continues every day and I started missing home”

I think almost everyone who has gone away for college or for a job has experienced the feeling of missing home. We complain of missing our friends, our families, our pets, or the view out of our living room windows. What struck me about Sonny’s experience was that he was missing something else entirely. At another point in the clip he says, “You know, here I’m normal. We can walk into Food Lion just like this.” What Sonny missed about home was the ability to feel normal. It isn't that Sonny didn't want to spend any time teaching people about what it meant for him to be Cherokee and what his life had been like; it was just that he wanted to be able to connect with others on other topics as well. He loved and appreciated his culture and his identity but when people asked him things he didn’t like feeling as though he was what was being studied. I ended staying and talking with Sonny for a couple of hours after the bonfire had ended. During that time he talked with me about the one friend that he made during his time away from home. The reason that he considered this man his friend was because he would come over and they would just sit and watch basketball games together. They shared stories with one another about their lives, sure, but only about the things that came up during the course of conversation. He didn't try to pry any information out of Sonny about anything.

How I understand this story in relation to teaching:

When a student in your classroom is coming to you from a culture that you or the other students may be unfamiliar with it is tempting to ask them questions about where they came from. You are talking about the treatment of women in society during a class so you ask a student from the Middle East to talk to the class about the treatment of women where they come from. You are trying to broaden the knowledge and understanding of all of the students in your classroom but you may be pushing your student into a situation that makes them uncomfortable. As a teacher and a learner I understand that being pushed to the edge of comfortable can be one of the most powerful ways to learn something new. At the same time I also realize that for students to succeed in my classroom I have to provide an environment where they feel like they are safe and respected if I want them to engage in their own learning. What that means for me is that I need to ask questions of culture and identity at the personal level. Instead of asking a single student about the way that they witnessed women being treated in the Middle East I should ask each student to think and talk about the ways that they see women treated in their family or their community. By approaching the subject in this way, students would be able to see the differences and similarities in each of their backgrounds as it pertains to the treatment of women without singling any one person out. Students are then able to share their stories with one another at a level they feel comfortable with. They are less likely to lose their feeling of being normal like Sonny did because, while they are actually talking about themselves, they are not the subject that is being studied. Instead they are just better able to realize the ways that their lives are interconnected with the way that women are treated in society.