There are some glaring problems with the segment. Assuming you listened carefully and thought you were learning something about Pueblo people, I (regular readers of this blog know I am from Nambe Pueblo) offer the following.
We Are Still Here. In the broadcast, and on the webpage, there are explicit and implicit suggestions that we no longer exist.
On the webpage is a photo of the archaeologist interviewed for the segment. Here's the caption:
Archaeologist Kristen Kuckelman kneels in one of the ancient houses, or kivas, at Goodman Point Pueblo. Her research points to climate change as contributing to the disappearance of the Anasazi, or Pueblo People of the Southwest.
Two glaring errors in that caption are:
1) Equating house and kiva. They are not the same thing. One is a place you live. The other is a place for learning and ceremony. This error is also in the broadcast. It surprised me that an archaeologist would make that mistake.
2) "...disappearance of the Anasazi, or Pueblo People of the Southwest."
We didn't disappear. We moved.
That simple fact, however, is left out of the story. As such, it allows listeners to more firmly pack their mistaken notion that we no longer exist.
Later in the broadcast, a water manager says:
"They obviously didn't have our technology. They didn't have Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam. And when there was a change in the climate, they could not adapt to it," he says.
Couldn't adapt, so we disappeared. That word... adapt. A troublesome word---who or what adapts or is adapted? And what does it mean, to adapt?
He's talking, obviously, about that long-held notion that American Indians weren't using the land properly, and that Europeans, whose technology was superior, were justified in their actions to claim the land. Course, he's talking about water here, and says that dwindling water will mean that cities will buy water rights from farmers...
From farmers? Actually, one of the major water rights cases in northern New Mexico is between farmers and PUEBLO INDIANS.
The NPR story is rife with bias and error. There are some interesting aspects to it, and some things worth knowing, but I urge you to listen and read critically, always. It will take the concerted effort of all of us to change the ways that American society thinks/speaks about, and treats, American Indians.
And that includes writers, teachers, parents, librarians, and professors who write, edit, publish, review, and purchase children's books.
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