U & D

Civilization: from the Latin civilis, pertaining to the citizens (as opposed to the soldiers), polite, courteous. Not until around 1600 did the French and English begin to use the verb civilize, meaning to bring out of barbarism. Civilization was not used consistently until the late 1600’s, about the same time that barbarian came to mean other than foreign - by the French & Indian Wars, it had come to mean rude, wild, savage, uncivilized.

Civilization: a word that originally would have certainly pertained to Maine’s earliest cultures - and was used purposefully to rationalize the destruction of those cultures.

An excerpt from An Atlas of the Year 1000 states that “in all of North America around 1000 there was no native American whose name has survived.” This is in contrast to civilizations of Europe, Asia and the Islamic world, “where the story of the past is in large measure rooted in human character - history as narrative.”

What? It seems to me that John Man has it backwards. He certainly has paid no attention to the legacy of oral history from North America. The Native nations of Maine and the Maritimes are not covered in the atlas, and most of the North American nations are lumped into groups like “Plains Indians”. He does spend some time with the Mississippian culture, with whom the Wabanaki nations certainly traded, and with the Dorset and Thule (new to me - Inuit) cultures of modern day Canada. He even bring the Vikings into the story (see Investigating the Maine Penny).

With this lack of information “out there”, even from a Harvard scholar, it is no wonder that Maine’s legislators don’t accept that the Wabanaki nations have claim to ancestry beyond 1000 years ago. History begins with writing, at least for Europeans. Everything else is “prehistory.” That makes Maine Natives before 1008 prehistoric.

It is “missing history” and labels like this that defeat the effectiveness of LD291 too many times, in too many places. The thinking goes something like this: One has only to pick up the Atlas of the Year 1000 to see that there were other civilizations around the globe that had not only written language, but also highly developed architecture, astronomy, mathematics, art forms, etc. If the Wabanakis did not have this, they must be an inferior civilization - not a civilization at all! Their claims for land and artifacts must be just to “get something for nothing…” This sounds quite a bit like the 19th Century history text I quoted in my webquest: William Henry Elson on King Philip’s War (scroll down to read). It is a myth that needs exploding.

So - where does a Maine teacher go with this? If not dealt with directly, students might leave a good Wabanaki Studies lesson believing that European and later conquests, land claims and resettlements are justified because the Native culture was too weak, naive, or ill-prepared - that they deserved it OR it was inevitable that a more highly developed culture would transcend.

The best strategy is to stick to the facts about culture and worldview - let the technologies, old and new, speak for themselves. Let the cultural ethic speak for itself. Let the leadership models and community models speak for themselves. Read the Native voices that are available to us in print. You must teach these aspects of Wabanaki Studies before, after, and during a study of maps, treaties, conflicts, and contemporary issues.

What will you accomplish by doing this? You will be redefining Civilization for your students. Or rather, you will reapply the true meaning of the word. Your alert students will, as mine did, note the irony in the barbaric acts of the “civilized” Europeans. Acts that continue in this state, albeit not with the violence and destructive intent of the 1600 and 1700’s.

Take on this challenge and you will be helping to set a new course for Maine - one that your students, as voters and as adults, will continue to build.