The title for today's blog post comes from this math worksheet:
The photo was taken by the mother of a Native student in a school in Wisconsin. Indian Country Today has the full story, and I urge you to read it, talk with fellow teachers in your school, and evaluate teaching materials in your school, library, or home, with an eye towards identifying similarly offensive materials as this math worksheet.
Natives names carry significance---just like the naming of any people, anywhere---and this worksheet trivializes Native people by mocking Native names. It happens a lot. And "squaw" though widely recognized as derogatory, appears in a lot of children books.
Curious about the origin of the question/answer math worksheet, I found the "joke" in these places:
- The wiki.answers.com page
- Acted out by, presumably, a camp (or scouting or hobbyist group) where playing Indian (in stereotypical ways) is central to their identity (in this case, the "Ohana Tribe")
- In Recreation Handbook for Camp, Conference and Community by Roger E. Barrows (which is clearly the source the scouting group used for their skit)
- In Religious Humor: 409 Bits of Humor for Preachers, Teachers, and Public Speakers by Walter M. Buescher
- In All-Time Awesome Collection of Good Clean Jokes for Kids by Bob Phillips
I also figured out that the book the math worksheet is published in is Masterminds Multiplication & Division: Reproducible Skill Builders & Higher Order Thinking Activities Based on NCTM Standards, published 1995 by Incentive Publications. Masterminds Multiplication & Division is apparently used in a lot of schools. Is it in yours?
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