The Mohawk Immersion Program

Kathie and I just spent four days with Jeff, Kimi and Trey, plus Shane, Angie and Lydia in Washington DC. We enjoyed each other, visited museums and saw the sights. Knowing that we would be expected to do a lot of walking, Kathie and I engaged in serious preparation...well...we went out walking twice before we left. It was a good try...just too little too late...after three days we were exhausted. On our last full day, I actually declined the walking tour of monuments, in favour of spending a day alone in the American Indian Museum. The exhibits covered North, Central and South American Indian populations. It was a marvelous experience...but even with all that time, I did not get through all the exhibits.

There are many disturbing historical facts related to the clash of European and Indian cultures, but one of the most disturbing has been the systematic efforts of majority European cultures to force assimilation and loss of culture upon minority indigenous peoples. And this is not just an American issue...it has been a world wide problem.

When Kathie and I met in Sydney, we had many Maori friends from New Zealand. One was Richard Stewart. We were surprised to learn that he knew absolutely nothing about his culture, because he had been forbidden to speak his native language or learn his culture by the school system. He actually had to attend BYU Hawaii to learn his culture at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Even worse, Australian aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families in an effort to assimilate them more quickly into white society. The plan was a miserable failure. Likewise many American Indian children suffered similar fates. Kathie and I discovered during a visit to Louisiana, that even Cajun children were forbidden from speaking Cajun French for a period of about 30 years. That also failed...but every such attempt damaged a couple of generations of children.

I was really impressed with the Mohawk Indian exhibit, because it dealt with the loss of culture head on. Mohawk men are well known as high-rise steel workers on the east coast and along with traditional biases against Indian culture by schools, these people faced loss of culture due to dispersal of families across the country. Today the Mohawk Nation has embarked on what they call the Mohawk Immersion Program...which is an educational program for children and adults. Today their children are immersed in Mohawk culture in parallel with their US/Canadian culture, from an early age...and all adults have the opportunity to take classes in their language and culture. I thought it was an inspiring story which had application to our own contemporary cultural problems.

For example, when we look at the ills in our US society, we can see that there has been a serious effort by progressives in this country to eliminate God and prayer from schools. And the Constitution has not been taught in law schools for decades and very few children in the last two generations have been taught the importance of the Constitution or reverence for the founding fathers in schools. I heard Glenn Beck say that we need to start teaching religion, morality, the Constitution and the history of the founding fathers again, if we are ever to reclaim this country from the progressives.

So maybe we can learn something from the Mohawk Indian Nation. We need to encourage local school districts to establish Constitution Immersion Programs and seriously teach the Constitution and the history of the Founding Fathers to young and old alike. We need to build pride in our cultural history across this great country.