Textbooks are written in an oracular monotone, so that they claim to be true and important.
James W. LoewenNobody would ever want to read a textbook about the Civil War and then interrupt that for two pages about water rights in the west.
James W. LoewenAs a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth . . . Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery.
James W. LoewenStudents will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbooks stop lying to them.
James W. LoewenNative Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. โWhat we have done to the peoples who were living in North Americaโ is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, โour Original Sin.
James W. LoewenI often suggest in workshops that if you have 30 students in your American History course in 11th grade, or whatever grade level, that you maybe triple them up. You put, and have them choose, let's say 11 different Native American cultures. Maybe you give them a list of 15 and they choose 11 of those 15 so that they have some choice in the matter.
James W. Loewen