Message to Marie

SMAGOR who-is-at aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu
Sun, 08 Oct 1995 18:01:48 -0500 (CDT)

Marie asked for an elaboration on Native American tools--
I speak of course as a Byelorussian-German-Irish American with
no nonwestern cultural experiences of my own. Cazden, John,
and Hymes's Functions of Language in the Classroom has a number
of chapters on Native American experiences in language-based
classrooms--sorry, my copy's at my campus office right now so
I can't reel off the references. But Vera John [-Steiner] has
a chapter on the topic, as does Susan Philips (a very frequently
cited piece that she later developed into a book). Vera, can
you help me on this??

One thing to stress is that race-based generalizations inevitably
are problematic. My friend Mary Belgarde (now at the U. of New
Mexico), who is I think Pueblo, has characterized Native Americans
in the academy according to their degree of assimilation, with
three categories from fully assimilated to fully traditional, with
a mixed-orientation group in the middle. The degree of assimilation
will predict the degree of consonance with the mediational tools
of the academy (which would approximate Vygotsky's notion of
speech-based development towards "scientific concepts").

My interest in this topic is fairly recently, coincidental with my
move to Oklahoma, which is a translation of the term "Red Land/People"
(the terms land and people are interchangeable in [I think] Choctaw,
which is the language from which Oklahoma is derived). I suspect
that many people out there know more about Native American culture
than I do.

Peter Smagorinsky