Misplaced Multiculturalism: Representations of American Indians in U.S. History Academic Content Standards

Abstract

This qualitative textual analysis investigates the ideological lenses through which U.S. History content standards for grades 5–12 for Arizona and Washington frame interactions between American Indians and European Americans during U.S. national development. The study’s multiperspective critical conceptual framework interrogates the standards not only on the basis of inclusion of American Indians in curriculum content, but also on the different ways in which this inclusion challenges, problematizes, or disrupts simplistic social representations in curriculum documents. The analysis reveals stark differences between how the respective state education policy makers conceptualize American Indian–European American interactions. In Arizona historical content is the curriculum, while in Washington historical content informs the curriculum, which is geared toward critical reflectiveness about public policy issues. Both standards documents ultimately fall short in promoting critical thinking about American Indian–European American interactions because they succumb to separate pratfalls of multicultural inclusion orthodoxy. Arizona policy makers tend to shoehorn content on American Indians into a singular and simplistic narrative of U.S. economic, political, and social development, while Washington policy makers tend to construct artificial social binaries to create an accessible and relevant narrative template. The standards documents exemplify the zero‐sum nature of curricular politics, wherein we can learn as much about a society’s ascendant values from what gets excluded from the curriculum as from what gets included in the curriculum.