This history is too traumatic for me

I apologize if I’ve already told this story but I can hardly be bothered to check the milk in my fridge for spoilage so I’m definitely not going backwards through my newsletters to locate a previous iteration of it. Back in the day, 2012 to be exact, I was finishing my dissertation. I had chosen to study the traits possessed by people considered to be exceptional providers of professional development in Indian Education for All (IEFA). Put another way, teachers get trainings from time to time, and they get a lot of shitty ones, but they also occasionally experience really good ones. Montana’s Indian Education for All law was passed in 1999 and funded in 2006 so the first ten years or so of this millennium saw a fair amount of teacher PD in that realm. I wanted to know what made those really excellent PD providers stand out.

A process of nomination and elimination heaved forth seven names: four were Native (all different tribes) and three, non-Native. Also, five were women and two were men, in case that matters to you. I interviewed them each individually and asked about their beliefs and approaches to training teachers. A theme that emerged¹ , the only one I remember, is this: when these Native people addressed teachers to help them understand how to implement IEFA, they did so gently. I wrote, “All the American Indian interviewees described activities designed to put participants in their trainings at ease,” such as using humor to build trust, while “The non-Indian interviewees seemed more interested in challenging their teachers to feel the discomfort and seek resolution to it.”

I have thought of this over and over in the decade-plus since I wrote it. For context, almost all teachers in Montana are white, so in trainings that’s who composes most or all of the audiences. When American Indian trainers work with teachers, they’re mostly talking to white people, who, in the trainers’ and my own experience, easily feel attacked, become defensive, and stop listening. They’re especially quick to assume this stance when the speaker is Indigenous. If you’ve read White Fragility² or anything like it, you’ll recognize the concept often noted, wherein a white person doesn’t want to be lumped in with the bad people/racists and they’re very sensitive to being identified as white at all. I witnessed this when I took my Reservation Ambassadors club to a reservation border town in 2016 to do our relationship-building activities, and the white students in those classes said up front they thought we’d come to their school to label them racists.³

In addition, in my experience white people are really worried about offending someone, particularly Native Americans, and they recognize they lack information to know what’s offensive. This is why I was so thoroughly excited when over 100 teachers took the Native American Studies for Teachers class I offered through Chickadee Community Services last summer, and absolutely thrilled that nearly 500 people signed up for Native American Studies for Everyone this spring!⁴

Smudge materials (and crayons) in a first grade classroom in Browning.

I did not anticipate how much the material would challenge some participants. Many have commented via the confidential comment form and direct emails how much they are learning, how surprised/shocked/appalled they often feel after some of the reading, how little they knew even when they thought they possessed a solid grasp of the material. Some have said they’ve begun to feel deep guilt for being white, which treads closely to the study’s findings I noted above.

I’ve even received a few notes from folks telling me their own mental health has been compromised by learning the material. “This history is too traumatic for me,” they’ve said.

I both understand and do not understand this. Many of my friends are Native, and I lived and taught on a reservation and personally experienced trauma as well as a tight, mutually supportive community, as underlying facts of life. I learned about many of the topics in the NASfE class from living and working alongside tribal communities for most of my adulthood. I can never understand what it’s like to be Native, but I can see for myself some of what life is often like for some of my Native friends. Therefore if someone (white) tells me they’re traumatized by reading about the history and the wrenching acts of violence on Indigenous communities for the last 500+ years, it’s hard for me to grasp that level of sensitivity.

On the other hand, when people are insulated from this kind of heartache, other people’s lived experiences can shock them. Further self-isolation might be their reaction. I certainly felt myself imploding right after the recent election, and I had the privilege to go silent about it for a while. If I dig deep enough, I can find empathy for those folks as well.

After all this rambling, I guess I’ve arrived at my point. Whatever someone’s reaction to Native American Studies or to learning how to incorporate IEFA, should they dive into the pool of white guilt (it’s deep and a lot of people are swimming around in it!),⁵ or acknowledge their unintentional ignorance and aim to rectify it, or need a break so they can return ready for more, all of that is reasonable. As long as people try to learn and build stronger communities with their new education, that’s the best I can hope for.

1. for the nerds: it was a phenomenological study using emergent theme identification and analysis

2. I know, it’s problematic. But stick with me through this sentence.

3. We spent years doing this same work in off-reservation schools and never before had this happen. Note the year.

4. Psst..it’s available again this summer. Here’s the 411!

5. Well, swimming in the white guilt pool is okay for a while but maybe get out, dry off, and pick up the work where you left off.