When Oklahoma history is taught in public schools, does a story like this get told? Were you taught that Indians in Oklahoma were treated more fairly and humanely?
Friday, July 20, 2018
43: Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
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In my Oklahoma History class in high school, stories like this were not told about our state. I knew that Native Americans were treated in ways such as these in other states, but I rarely heard stories like this that happened in Oklahoma. The most I ever really heard about Native Americans in our state was that they lived on reservations here after being forcibly removed from their homelands during the Trail of Tears. It is safe to say, from the lack of stories about our state, that I was, in a way, taught that Oklahomans and Native Americans coexisted peacefully, when that was not actually the case.
ReplyDelete-Kaylee George
DeleteI have the same story as Kaylee. In high school during our history classes we learned about the Oklahoma Land Run, but they never told stories about what they did to the Native Americans to get this land. They talk about how it happened in different states, but never specifically Oklahoma. As children, we celebrated Land Run every year at school, as a big event and staked our ground on the playground and had a picnic. This was to show us how the people then got to choose their land.
DeleteAlthough I did learn a lot about Native American culture in my Oklahoma history class, I only remember barely addressing the mistreatment of natives in Oklahoma. We did watch a few video clips of how natives were portrayed in movies, and touched on some of the discrimination they faced, but we never crossed over into anything as violent as what is told in Gann's novel. I am very surprised that something that happened not so long ago in a place not too far away is not talked about more- in our classroom or our everyday lives. Even though my Oklahoma history teacher had native heritage and taught us a lot of interesting things, I feel that history that only happened a century ago has definitely been smoothed over. Leaving out the ugliness of history seems deceitful and makes me wonder what else has happened near me that I have been blind to.
DeleteKatie Cowger
When taught about the land rush, the sooners, and Oklahoma becoming a state, there was no mention of the interactions between the incoming settlers and the Native Americans whose land it was they were taking. We were taught about the relocation of the American Indians under the Jackson administration, the placement of the tribes into the various sections of the state, and Native American culture and social structure. Then the land rush is taught and Oklahoma is treated as though it's new statehood dispels all the lawlessness of the frontier. Oklahoma and the Native American governments simply coexist and the new state becomes civil and a shining new democracy. There is no mention of the crimes committed against the Osage or against any of the other tribes. This book was very eye opening to me, because at no point in my education leading up to now has there been any mention of a corrupt, dirty Oklahoma like was present in the time of Mollie Burkhart.
ReplyDeleteStarting in my middle school American history class, stories such as these were never told. We learned about how President Jackson moved the Indians off their land through the trail of tears. We were always told it was a long hard journey and shown some art work of how it must have been like. We were shown the unjust ways of conforming young native American children to American ways, such as cutting off their braids and making them wear clothing that was not traditional to their customs. When we were taught about the land run and the sooners, the Native Americans were never mentioned. They were off in their designated area while the land run occurred in another designated area. Never did it cross our minds that these areas were the same, and that the Native Americans were once again losing their land.
ReplyDeleteMuch like with Kaylee's case, the injustices committed against Native Americans during the land run was a topic never discussed in my American or Oklahoma History classes. It would be nice to see a change in curriculum that would bring this subject to light.
DeleteStories about how monsterous Americans really can be are never told, never brought attention towards, because it is “unpleasant” and gives America a “bad picture”. I was always told about the Trail of Tears and the Land Runs were always shown to be a harmless way for people to get land, with Sooners being more of a mascot for the whole thing. Teachers and textbooks never went into detail about how the land was acquired, how the people that surely must have lived there felt or was treated when their land was taken and given to new landowners, and if it was, it was mostly brushed off in a sentence or two within the texts. It was simply, Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory that eventually worked together to create a proud and clean Oklahoma, when that is not the case and that narrative gets old rather fast.
ReplyDeleteIn my Oklahoma history class in high school the talking about how the Native Americans was a sensitive subject that my teacher rarely spoke of. She claimed, when asked why we didn't talk about the terrible treatment the natives received, that the books did not cover that information and her lesson plans were revised to keep us safe from the "outside world". The school wanted to keep us absent minded and to not lose our trust in your government because the government is supposed to always have the best interest of the people in mind.They are not supposed to consider a certain a person with a darker or different skin color than their own to be less human than anther. They are also not supposed treat them wrongfully for the governments own benefit. This is what the school wanted us to know. Everything I know about the way Natives were treated was told to me mostly from my family and from summer camps that the Chickasaw Nation put on to teach us about our heritage.
ReplyDeleteIn my Oklahoma history class we were never told
ReplyDeletestories of this manner. We were always told that Native Americans and Oklahomans seemed to sort of work together in some ways. When I started to read this part of the book I was in total shock because I had never heard of Oklahoma ever treating people this way. It just made me feel disappointed in the way we used to treat Native Americans. My history teachers always seemed to make everything America did look like the good side of things. I never realized how bad we had acted in some instances.
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ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOklahoma History was only a half-semester course that freshmen take so unfortunately, we never got too in depth with any of the events that took place, granted what little time we had. However, the class did go over the interactions between Native Americans and the new Oklahomans. Though not covered in the textbooks we were provided, our history teacher did make it known that fun "land rushes" we did as children had a darker and more upsetting background. Reading the novel, it did not surprise me that the Osages were treated unfairly but it did surprise me however how cruel the mistreatment was.
-Sabrina Arredondo
I took Oklahoma history as a high school freshman. In my class, we never really talked about how the Native Americans were truly treated by white settlers. The only thing that would have came close to the mistreating of the Native Americans was when they were forced to locate themselves to Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears. However, once they settled on their reservations, it seemed that they lived a happy life, and kind of assimilated themselves into modern society. Reading the novel about the Osage came as a shock to me, and it actually made me wish the we had learned about the mistreatment of Native Americans.
ReplyDelete-Russell McCreary II
My Oklahoma history teacher was actually a member of a Native American tribe, but I do not recall him telling us about such a cruel plot as was presented in Killers of the Flower Moon. Unlike many of your experiences, my teacher did make us aware of the assimilation schools and he did mention that the transition after the land run was not smooth. However, he did not tell us all of the details of the unfair treatment the Native Americans endured. He was more focused on teaching us Native American culture than how it had been repressed. He was very involved in his tribe so I am sure he knew a lot more of the atrocities suffered than he taught us. He seemed to think that teaching us about Native American culture was more beneficial than resenting the injustice they suffered.
ReplyDeleteBrittany West
In my Oklahoma history classes in high school we were taught that many Native American tribes were relocated to Oklahoma from their homes. We were never taught specific tragedies such as the story of the Osage tribe. The way we were taught made you disassociate the history from the actual humans that made up the tribe.
ReplyDeleteIn my Oklahoma history class stories like this were told. At my school it was taught that the Indians were not treated fairly. It is obvious that the Indians were done wrong, and it is nearly impossible to spin it in a way that they were not. If the truth is to be taught, then the mistreatment of the Indians must be included. Almost everything that the white settlers did was inhumane and unfair. Taking land and forcing relocation is not being treated fairly or in a humane way. Even if the Indians sold their land it was not their choice to do so in the first place. The Indians had every right to stay on the land that was allotted to them, but yet they were forced out. The early history of the United States is full of stories like this one, and many that are far worse. The Osage are just one example of Indian brutality, and these instances should be taught accurately to what really happened.
ReplyDelete-Gabe Wilmot