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The Royal "We" - ST Week 6.1

Today, students on Team Nova finished watching James Cameron’s Avatar, our main vehicle for discussing the Native American experience of Westward Expansion in the United States. Returning from the weekend break after three days of substitute teachers last Wednesday through Friday, students understandably struggled with the transition back to their normal classroom routines. All the same, today’s humanities class activities fit into a similar lesson plan to the one used this past Friday, which I believe helped students adjust to Nova’s face changes more smoothly.

After wrapping up our Avatar viewing, Mr. J and I led a review discussion on how the film compares to the many Native American encounters with white settlers circa 1800-1890. Before diving into the discussion with each class, however, Mr. J stressed one point that carried over from the discussions I led last week: we as individuals cannot and do not speak for a whole group of people or for a single set of beliefs. 


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Now, last week I emphasized this point with my students when I caught myself saying “we” almost every time I referred to the white settlers pushing west. As I became more aware of my using the Royal “We” as a blanket term for white settlers/ European Americans, I paused the discussion to explain that by “we,” I did not mean my students and me today. Rather, I justified using “we” as a way to represent ourselves as modern American settlers, advanced in medicine and technology that impacts our lives today, just as the white settlers pushing west created beneficial and devastating ripples for indigenous America. I did my best to make sure that students understood I did not mean “we” as in WE should carry the blame of those who settled here before us. No individual should carry the weight some part of their identity may have dragged through the past. It is not our responsibility to alter history or feel shame for things that we did not personally do. Instead, it is our responsibility as humans to recognize the rights and wrongs of the past, and then repair any damage that the repercussions of past wrongs have sustained in our modern society. “We” may not have actively forced Native Americans off of their tribal lands, but “we” can certainly recognize the harm in doing so and prevent similar (if only subtle) events from reviving the corrupt values of history’s dominant groups. Today, Mr. J again delivered this message to our students when employing “we” to refer to white settlers.

Although I cannot be sure if every student understood our message about the Royal “We” (and if they did, just how much of the message was received or agreed with), I believe addressing the idea of using “we” as a collective for past Americans is essential to maintaining a safe learning environment keen for hard historical discussions in any classroom. When asked if they had any thoughts or concerns about our explanations for using “we” to refer to past Americans, no student objected to the language choice so many historians tend to make when writing from a perspective that can identify with their focus in some way. I am not sure how comfortable I would be with objecting to my teacher’s use of “we” if I were an eighth grade student, and the inability to gauge the situation accurately based on the likely chance that one student was uncomfortable enough to suffer in silence is more than convincing that I should continue the conversation with a conscious switch from “we” to “white settlers.” The expression of popular ideas, especially those that are repeatedly examined through a Royal “We” rhetoric that rallies support for a particular (usually patriotic) theme or message, can be challenging when the popular language employed toes the line between self-identification and objective offense. In the future, I plan to pay closer attention to the language I use when describing historical ideas that could easily encompass a Royal “We.” For now, I know I will make the conscious effort to continue helping my students identify with historical narratives without using “we” to refer to a collective group solely because the group members were advanced Americans.

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