Native Americans complain about the revised AP framework for US history

American exceptionalism is back.

The College Board, having deleted the term in its highly-controversial 2014 revision of the AP U.S. History Curriculum Framework, has reinstated it in the 2015 revision, which came out at the end of July.

Three American Indian history scholars reviewed the curriculum in detail at ICTMN’s request.

Shannon Speed, Chickasaw, director of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Texas Austin, defines American exceptionalism. “What it means is the notion that America is an exceptional country, the greatest country in the world, founded on laudable principles, and that while there were minor things like genocide and slavery, really in the end we should all rally around our identity as Americans because those things were asides in this big narrative of American history.”

The term, says James Riding In, Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, is “an attempt to distort history and to place white Americans above reproach, condemnation and culpability.” Riding In is associate professor of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University.

The treatment of American Indians in the narrative of U.S. history is an issue that K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Mvskoke/Creek Nation, professor of Justice and Social Inquiry, and Distinguished Scholar in Indigenous Education at Arizona State University’s Center for Indian Education, also finds troubling. She cites this statement in the curriculum: “Latino, American Indian, and Asian American movements continued to demand social and economic equality and redress of past injustices.” ...