1 The History of the Prompt: Drawing Knowledge in Elementary School Classrooms: An Analysis of Stereotypical Indian Images Produced by Elementary

Students in a Northeast Michigan Intermediate School District Patrick Russell LeBeau Over the past 23 years as I have been lecturing and teaching on the general subject of American Indian Studies I have collected audience/student drawings of Indians. Regardless whether I was introducing a film, giving a lecture, teaching a class, presenting at an elementary school assembly, or conducting a teacher training workshop/seminar I would ask participants at the very start of the session to draw in the form of a logo or image what they thought the film/lecture/class/presentation/workshop was about. The participants were already anticipating the content would be something about American Indians because the title or subject or focus of the event communicated that is was so. Even my Lakota/Plains Chippewa ancestry provided a physiognomic prompt as I stood before them making my request. Provided with a title, a subject and an American Indian teacher, participants spent 10 minutes drawing and doodling images/pictures of what they believed to be relevant to the days work and although what they drew is/was somewhat predictable, the level of imagination and knowledge of Indians and consistency of the imagery between disparate audience groups is something surprisingly interesting to analyze and study. After making a collage after 10 years of collected images, what was very apparent was the difficulty distinguishing between what was drawn by elementary students from Michigan and California and what was drawn by adults, which included graduate students, social studies teachers, professors and community members from across the United States. Regardless of geographical location, the diversity of audiences shared an elaborate and imaginative idea of American Indians as revealed by their drawings, even though their drawings are predictable, stereotypical, stylized and frozen in the past. Some differences were evident: a number of elementary students used color crayon or color marker and most adults drew stick figure Indians and scenarios (less confident, I believe, in their artistic abilities). More remarkable were the similarities that in the majority of pictures drawn can be reduced to teepees and warriors, with war

2 weapons and feathered headdresses a close second. Why are the same pictures drawn over and over again by all age groups regardless of gender, age, or educational background? Clearly, the participants had knowledge of Indians, albeit oversimplified, standardized and non-historical. Since the late 1960s, scholars have researched the presence of Indian stereotypes in American consumer culture, Hollywood films, T.V. programming, toys, childrens literature, America canonical literature, American art, and American popular culture and this presence is the understandable source of information that has shaped what an ordinary U.S. citizen knows about Indians. To name a few, Raymond Stedmans Shadows of the Indian: Stereotypes in American Culture (1967), Arlene B. Hirschfelders American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children: A Reader and a Bibliography (1st Edition 1982), Peter C. Rollins and John E. OConnors Hollywoods Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film (1998), Jacquelyn Kilpatricks Celluloid Indians: Native Americans in Film (1999) and Philip J. Delorias Playing Indian (1998) and Indians in Unexpected Places (2004) are among many who have documented the pervasive presence of American Indian stereotypes in American culture and society over many decades since the 1960s. The scholarship has proven that stereotypical images of Indians are easy to find and that these images have had a subliminal influence on impressionable minds. Although early education about American Indians begins in elementary school, most often in fourth grade, the knowledge young people in the United States have of Indians predates classroom instruction. For example, an education major working with elementary students and taking one of my classes on the origin and history of American Indian stereotypes brought to me after a lecture on Indian classroom artifacts an Indian paddling a canoe; a classroom project where students constructed the canoe out of paper and card and when completed their name would be inscribed on the paddle. See Figure 14. However, this student reported that despite the project, most of the students could tell elaborate stories about Indians and they could also draw very detailed pictures of Indian life frozen in a distant past, as the main part of this essay explains. The education major was amazed children knew so much about Indians. In a another, students are instructed how to build a simple three-dimensional Indian-life diorama. One teacher reported to me that providing the students with basic materials (shoebox, colored construction

3 paper, a teepee template, a few toy horses, scissors, crayons and markers) and a simple prompt (make an Indian home) was all that was needed for a fifty minute activity. Not only were students absorbed with the construction of the diorama, they play-acted and were able to tell detailed stories about make-believe Indians. Though much that is created and playacted is most often stereotypical, teachers are often surprised at the sophisticated knowledge young people can bring to the classroom before and during lessons about American Indians. I have had many students in my undergraduate classrooms remember fondly their first Indian lessons and school projects. Furthermore, the drawings of adults compared to that of children suggests what elementary students know of Indians can be retained and remembered as they grow into adults and for some, even after a college education. For example, I was surprised, that a few days after a lecture I gave on the origins of Indian stereotypes, a college student of mine gave me a drawing he made in elementary school that he kept for many years as a prized keepsake. What also was remarkable is that young students can learn on the fly. The drawing-the-Indian prompt changed to fit certain settings and circumstances.

Hello (Aannii), People (Anishinaabe) and Until Later (Baamaapii) The elaborate story-filled pictures 4th graders produce when asked to draw what they know about American Indians reveals a complex visual language students can use to communicate knowledge they are confident they possess. The drawings of 4th graders reveal an elaborate connection between pictures and words constructed with letters of the alphabet as demonstrated by the numerous drawings of recognizable implements, like a bow, aligned aside a word, like bow,

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Figure 14: An education major in my course on Rethinking Michigan Indian History and working in a local elementary school classroom gave me this canoe after listening to a lecture where I produced examples of similar projects conducted by elementary school teachers in other schools

5 Figure 15: A School Project

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Figure 16: College Students 4th Grade Drawing