Indigenous communities have inhabited Louisiana since time immemorial. However, the national project of teaching the rise of the West as a heroic story remains the curricular centerpiece in elementary and high school history classes in North America. As a curriculum theorist, and former science and history teacher, I am concerned with the ways in which my teachings of colonialisms cultural, historical, and national narratives suppress and silence the stories of the colonized. Therefore, the purpose of this paper (based on a four-year qualitative study) is to share oral histories of the United Houma Nation in order to illustrate their daily lives inside and outside the colonizers institutional systems.
Louisianas political, judicial and educational institutions recently settled the longest desegregation lawsuit in American history. My dissertation research illustrates historically how Louisianas State apparatus dictated educational exclusion through the infamous Jim Crow policies of racial segregation. Like many African-American communities in the south, the United Houma Nation did not have any access to White systems of public education until the mid-1960s. An Indian identity denied the United Houma Nation from having access to African American schools as well. Community members were excludedraciallyfrom Louisianas educational institutions. Very little research has been done the United Houma Nation and their historical relationships with Louisianas educational systems. The potential social significance for revisiting history via qualitative research methods that stress situating and contextualizing local voices is that it becomes a way for transforming both the content and the purpose of history.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-01242006-104756 |
| Date | 25 January 2006 |
| Creators | Ng-A-Fook, Nicholas Anthony |
| Contributors | William F. Pinar, Joseph Kronick, Claudia Eppert, Denise Egea-Kuehne, Petra Munro Hendry |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-01242006-104756/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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