Smithsonian asks students to consider whether California Gold Rush was 'genocide'

Lesson plans focus on “Native American perspectives on the violence of Western expansion”

Students studying the California Gold Rush will be asked whether settlers’ actions toward Native Americans constituted “genocide” in new lesson plans developed by Smithsonian Institute researchers.

THE Smithsonian Review recently touted the lesson plans, “The Impact of the Gold Rush on California Native Americans,” as a “better way to teach the California Gold Rush.”

“…for nearly 200 years, this series of events has been taught in American schools primarily as a victory of man over the earth, a successful extraction of minerals for human profit,” the report states.

Instead, researchers at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian wrote new materials based on “Native American perspectives on the violence of Western expansion,” according to the report.

“The investigation of primary sources, maps, and historical photographs asks students to examine documents and determine whether U.S. actions against California Natives during the Gold Rush meet the definition of genocide of the Nations United,” the report said.

In an introductory essay to the documents, California State University Sacramento history professor Khal Schneider wrote that European settlers discovered a “thriving” world of Native people in California upon their arrival .

The new settlers quickly disrupted their “world of abundance and relative peace” and “violently destroyed the work of generations of Native Californians,” Schneider wrote.

“The Americans took control of California by law and violence,” he wrote. “American citizens believed that they had the right to use physical force to secure their own rights and to take land from Indians because of their race. »

The magazine says more:

The lesson plan encourages students to analyze conflicting perspectives and sources from the past, and to think about how modern perspectives inform this understanding. To this end, the lesson includes a modern artwork by Harry Fonseca that provides insight into the aftermath of the Gold Rush. Fonseca’s painting from the series “Discovery of Gold in California” is a dripping mixed media work speckled with mica and dirt. The late artist Nisenan Maidu described it as an “explosion”: “cultures coming together, clashing; a profusion of greed, loss; massive change… The damage inflicted during this chaotic period was considerable. This damaged the land and the living things on it, the Native Americans and other peoples as well.

An “About” page for the online lesson plans describes the goal in more detail: “The inclusion of this content adds a long-forgotten piece of American history to the traditionally taught Gold Rush narrative and offers an opportunity for recognition and healing from atrocities. committed against the indigenous peoples of California during this time.

Irene Kearns, one of the project’s authors, told the magazine that the lesson plans involved four years of collaborative efforts with scholars, educators and Native American leaders.

“People are ready. They’ve been waiting for years – hundreds of years – for this to be made public, and people have been overwhelmingly positive,” Kearns said.

The lesson plans were a project of the Smithsonian’s Native Knowledge 360 initiative, which provides teaching materials, professional development for teachers, and other resources with “new perspectives on Native American history and cultures.”

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