A New Era for Teaching American Indian Studies

Abstract

In one of my recent classes, I offered my students a series of slides depicting “upside down” maps of the world.¹ The maps showed the Southern Hemisphere at the “top” of the map and the Northern at the “bottom.” The change seemed to transform the importance of continents like South America and Africa (which was also rendered to reflect its true size). I used this tool as a way of disorienting my students comfort with their knowledge. A couple of students were already familiar with the maps and their implications, but the majority were rather perplexed, and then visibly contemplative about their long-assumed understanding of the physical shape of the world. In the class discussion, students (and later the maintenance crew that came in during a class break) offered a few telling comments. One of the first things that most noticed was that (in one of the maps) Australia suddenly seemed to have more global importance based upon its now “prominent” location and “centrality” to the entire world. The “down under” (read: hidden, insignificant, a second thought) was now “up above” (read: visible, important, primary to) the rest of the world. At the same time, the United States—what Americans (and only Americans) think of as the center of the universe suddenly became contextualized. One student remarked that he felt rather uncomfortable that on this upside down map the United States seemed “rather small, pushed over to the corner,” and thus less important.

Question: Mr. President... What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the twenty-first century and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?—Mark Trahant, editorial page editor of The Seattle Post Intelligencer and former president of the Native American Journalists Association.

Answer: Tribal sovereignty means that; it’s sovereign. I mean, you’re a—you’ve been given sovereignty, and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.—President Bush, Washington, DC, August 6, 2004.