1 Introduction
This chapter explores how the primary-school curriculum of the Dominican Republic repeats and perpetuates biased colonial representations of past Indigenous people, and how this has shaped the general public’s conception of these populations in both the past and present. In this vein, we will also explore the broader disconnection between scientific research and the popular ideas the general public has received through primary education, which are strongly rooted in early colonial history. We will focus on the supposed territorial and ethnic configuration of the hierarchical Indigenous groups of the island of Haytí, called Hispaniola by Columbus, the site of the present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti (Herrera Malatesta, 2018; Tejera, 1976). The currently accepted idea is that the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European chroniclers reported that this island was formerly controlled by five cacicazgos (a form of hierarchical social and political system called chiefdom in English). These early descriptions were solidified more than a century later with a map created in 1731 by the French Jesuit missionary Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (1682–1761; Charlevoix, 1977). Based on the early chronicles, Charlevoix “filled the gaps” by drawing borders on the island map and depicted five territories with clear frontiers (Figure 3.1).
The original five-cacicazgo map created by Jesuit missionary Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix in 1731 (courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
Centuries later, Charlevoix’s map was used by twentieth-century historians and archaeologists to develop their ideas about the cultural, political, and historical composition of the island’s pre-Columbian groups (e.g., Rouse, 1948; Veloz Maggiolo, 1972; Wilson 2007). However, owing to the combination of recent archaeological research and a new and decolonized reading of the early chronicles and cartographies, there has been a growing critique of the use of this map and the early chronicles as objective observations of the past Indigenous reality (e.g., Curet, 2016; Herrera Malatesta 2018; Rodríguez Ramos & Pagán-Jiménez, 2016; Ulloa Hung, 2016). The early chronicles and Charlevoix’s map were depictions of the early interactions and conflicts between the
A contemporary simplification of Charlevoix’s map. This representation is usually the one found in schoolbooks and throughout the internet
CACICAZGOS DE LA HISPANIOLA BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, 2007, IS LICENSED UNDER CC0 1.0
The premise of this paper is that contemporary archaeologists, as well as general researchers, in the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean, have the responsibility to critically revisit the traditional historical interpretations and representations made by the early Spanish invaders of past Indigenous people. We want to emphasize the relevance and value of creating direct dialogues between professional archaeologists and local communities, particularly when it comes to the accepted biases of colonial history. In the case of the Indigenous people before Columbus, their ethnicity, and their geographical configurations, this has contributed to perpetuating a simplistic view of Indigenous histories and their influence on today’s society.
This paper presents a group of interviews with primary-school teachers from the Montecristi province carried out during the summer of 2018, in the context of the NEXUS 1492 research project. The interviews were designed to understand what knowledge the teachers currently have regarding the five-cacicazgo
One challenge we faced during fieldwork in Montecristi and other provinces in the Dominican Republic was that of discussing with the general public the new interpretations and models our work produced, particularly in relation to the five-cacicazgo map. This is because this description of past Indigenous people is deeply embedded in the popular knowledge of the island’s past. This motivated us to combine our expertise in archaeology, education, and heritage management to develop a potential solution through a bottom-up approach. We think that any new archaeological model presenting an alternative to classic and popular ideas of past Indigenous people needs to be established through a dialogue with the communities that consider such past their history. Yet, in developing a dialogue and a solution to our initial challenge, we encountered yet another challenge, namely, how should we present new information and ideas from archaeological and historical research to teachers, when the available school materials are precisely those books where biased, colonial descriptions are found? How do we find a common ground for communicating to the general public the new archaeological and historical finds and interpretations concerning the five cacicazgos, as well as in classroom settings (and the education curriculum in the long term) without affecting, much less attacking, the ideas, emotional connections, and personal pride that most people have toward the accepted description of the past political, ethnic, and territorial organization?
2 The Five-Cacicazgo Map and the Taíno
In this section, our aim is to highlight the historical and intellectual creation of these “ethnic groups” and their territories, as reflected in the early chronicles, the works of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historians, and twentieth- century archaeologists.
On December 6, 1492, Columbus arrived on an island that the Indigenous groups called Haytí. The first group they established contact with was the people led by the cacique Guacanagarí (Arranz, 2006: 188; Las Casas, 1821 [1552]: 26, 1875 [1552–1561]: 481; Oviedo y Valdés, 1851 [1535]: 65). Based on both the chronicles and later research, it is believed that this chiefdom was a Taíno cultural and linguistic group (Granberry & Vescelius, 2004). In 1493, with the remaining materials from the Santa María shipwreck, the Spanish built a fort on the territory of cacique Guacanagarí and called it “La Navidad.” In this fort, Columbus left thirty-nine men, and then continued sailing along the northern coast of Haytí/La Española (Arranz, 2006, p. 195). On January 1, 1493, Columbus received the news that the sailors he sent before had contacted another “king,” who wore a gold crown on his head, some twenty leagues from his position at La Navidad (Arranz, 2006, p. 206). The approximate location of this reference is the area where Columbus would later build the town of La Isabela. From these first explorations of the island and contacts with its Indigenous population, both Columbus and the early chroniclers began to rename the lands and catalogue their inhabitants, animals, and plants from the European perspective of the fifteenth century.
The colonial creation of ethnicities and territories began from this early moment in the colonization of the Caribbean and the Americas. These early “descriptions” were used during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to
In terms of ethnicity, based on the early chronicles and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century documents, since the twentieth century, researchers have assumed the existence of three ethnic groups—the Taíno, Macorís, and Ciguayo—in the north-central region of Haytí. However, the ‘real’ existence of these cultural groups as ethnic and linguistic units, as well as their cultural, social, and political configurations and structures, has been widely debated by Caribbean archaeologists (e.g., Curet, 2014; Keegan, 1997, 2007; Keegan and Hofman, 2017; Moscoso, 2008; Oliver, 2008, 2009; Rodríguez Ramos, 2010; Ulloa Hung, 2014; Wilson, 2007).
The first reference to the term “Taíno” is from Columbus’s second voyage, where upon reaching the beaches of an island south of Haytí (present-day Lesser Antilles), he was greeted by people shouting “Taíno, taíno,” whose meaning has been identified as “good” or “noble” (Curet, 2014, p. 470; Keegan & Hofman, 2017, p. 13; Oliver, 2009, p. 6). Columbus found out that these people were members of a community from the island of Haytí and were supposedly taken as slaves by the Carib of the southern islands. Based on this event, in the nineteenth century, the term “Taíno” began to be used in relation to a particular ethnic group of the northern Caribbean and its language. This first term used to identify an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Greater Antilles has been attributed to Rafinesque in 1836 (Keegan and Hofman, 2017, p. 12; Oliver, 2009, p. 6), the term was also used a few years later, in 1867, by Martinus (Curet, 2014, p. 471). In 1871, Brinton used the term “Taíno” to describe the linguistic classification of the Arawak language as spoken in the Greater Antilles (Keegan & Hofman, 2017; Oliver, 2009). The popularization of the term “Taíno” was a consequence of the historical reconstructions that took place throughout the nineteenth century, which continued the generalizations and homogenizations of early chroniclers of the ethnic and linguistic diversity of
These ideas were strengthened by the development of archaeological research in the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic during the early and mid-twentieth century. Mainly, Rouse’s attempts to relate archaeological evidence, mainly ceramic styles, with ethnic groups—based primarily on the above-mentioned early chronicles—consolidated the idea that Taíno referred to a pre-Columbian ethnic group. Based on the spatial distribution of the ceramic remains and the comparison of archaeological sites in different parts of the Greater Antilles, Rouse (1986, 1992) linked the development of Ostionoid ceramics and its subseries (Ostionan, Meillacan, and Chican) with the Taíno “ethnic” group and the development of hierarchical systems in the Greater Antilles. In fact, Rouse (1992, pp. 33–34) defined three cultural areas for the Taíno groups and their ceramics: 1) the Western Taínos, including part of Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, linked to the Meillacoid series (Rouse’s Meillacan Ostionoid); 2) the Classic Taínos, located on the islands of Haytí and Puerto Rico, linked to the Chicoid series (Rouse’s Chican Ostionoid); and 3) the Eastern Taínos, scattered across the Virgin Islands, associated with the Ostionoid series (Rouse’s Elenan Ostionoid). For Rouse, the Taíno “ethnic” group was archaeologically represented by these ceramic series and was the result of the migrations and interactions of Arawak-speaking groups who travelled from the Guianas and the Venezuelan coast around 2300 BC (Rouse, 1986, 1992). Rouse’s model strengthened the idea of the island’s five Taíno cacicazgos. Furthermore, Rouse based his model visually on the map Charlevoix created in the eighteenth century (Figure 3.3).
Comparison of the original five-cacicazgo map with its most common variations from the archaeological literature
Later, Veloz Maggiolo (1972, p. 235) also used and modified the map of the five chiefdoms, transforming Rouse’s Ciguayo territory into a sub-territory of the Maguá chiefdom, and assigning it to an ethnic/linguistic category called “Ciguayo-Macorís.” Veloz Maggiolo based this notion on archaeological data recovered from different sites in the northern Dominican Republic (Veloz Maggiolo et al., 1981) that, in his opinion, supported Vega’s proposal (1990 [1980]) that the distribution of Meillacoid ceramics correlates with the spatial distribution
The idea of the five Indigenous chiefdoms has obscured the sociopolitical dynamics of the island’s different Indigenous groups for centuries. Charlevoix’s
3 The Interview Methodology
3.1 Concepts
To find the best ways of working with alternative interpretations of history in a school setting (Grossman, 1990; Shulman, 1986; Van Driel et al., 1998), we asked teachers about their knowledge of the five-cacicazgo model that is taught from the fourth grade of the primary-school education curriculum. We looked at the literature for an overview of the historical significance that has been assigned to the concept of the cacicazgos in historical records and school textbooks (Seixas et al., 2012). On the other hand, we also explored the use of primary sources under the lens of a heritage-education approach in which interaction with the remains of past cultures is encouraged as part of the study program for classes in history and social studies. For this reason, we have looked at the archaeological evidence and findings and how they might shed light on the traditional understanding of the cacicazgos as learned from the European records.
Con Aguilar (2020) noted that the teaching of Indigenous heritage is not formally a separate subject in the curriculum but is integrated into the subject of social studies throughout Caribbean primary-school curricula. The topic of the five-cacicazgo map is part of the content on the Dominican Republic’s Indigenous past that is taught in primary-school social studies curricula. This content is based on colonial knowledge of the cacicazgos as derived from European records. The social studies curriculum of the Dominican Republic presents a Caribbean history that seems only to have properly begun with the arrival of the Spanish (Reid, 2012). Only general social and cultural details about the Taíno are taught, and even less about other groups from before the arrival of Europeans. While the lack of written records by the Taínos (Keegan & Hofman, 2017) has limited the amount of available information, it is true that formal education adopts the general perspective that it was the Europeans who brought civilization and order to the island, the Caribbean, and the Americas.
The emphasis on the Taíno that began in the nineteenth century has continued into the contemporary era. In the Dominican Republic, for example, there is an interest in studying Taíno heritage (e.g., Con Aguilar et al., 2017; Pešoutová, 2015; Ricourt, 2016). Another key example is the literary movement of indigenistas dominicanos that has contributed to strengthening national
We believe there is evidence to support the existence of hierarchical communities on the island before the arrival of the Europeans. Nevertheless, recent archaeological research has contributed to presenting a more complex cultural, political, and territorial landscape for these Indigenous groups than previously accepted (e.g., Herrera Malatesta, 2018; Hofman et al. 2018; Ulloa Hung, 2014). On this basis, and following Seixas et al. (2012), we seek to explore how teachers and students respond to critical questions about how the curriculum depicts accounts of the past and what resources it uses. We believe that the teaching of the Indigenous past should include discussions of potential new alternatives for explaining the spatial and cultural distribution of the ethnic groups present on the island of Haytí before and during the arrival of Columbus.
3.2 Methods
During our summer fieldwork campaign of 2018, and with the support and permission of the Ministry of Education and the local educational district, we carried out a series of group interviews with basic-school teachers from the Montecristi province. This province has six educational districts: Montecristi (code 1301), Guayubín (code 1302), Villa Vazquez (code 1303), Dajabón (code 1304), Loma de Cabrera (code 1305), and Restauración (code 1306), that include both public and private schools. To obtain a representative sample of this province and considering the temporal and organizational challenge of interviewing all the teachers from every district, we decided to focus on the educational district of Guayubín, the largest, and aim to interview as many teachers from public basic schools as possible. As the focus of this research was on studying how historical narratives have influenced the way teachers perceive and teach the Indigenous past, we selected a survey research design and conducted interviews as instruments for collecting data for our study. Self-administered questionnaires (Nardi, 2006) were distributed to the schoolteachers by the main author with the collaboration of Lic. Joselín Viallet, department head of social
School teachers from Montecristi province in conversation at the distribution of the questionnaire
PHOTO EDUARDO HERRERA MALATESTA, USED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE TEACHERS
School teachers from Montecristi province during the questionnaire
PHOTO EDUARDO HERRERA MALATESTA, USED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE TEACHERS
Along these lines, we applied a mixed-method design following a convergent design (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018; Plano Clark & Ivankova, 2016): the collected data was subject to separate qualitative and quantitative analyses. Qualitative data analysis was used to inform and/or explain the quantitative analysis. As a result, we opted for a survey design combing both deductive and inductive logic—that is, both open- and closed-ended questions, as our research needed both types of data. First, quantitative data (deductive logic) allowed us to verify our theoretical assumptions concerning the current state of teachers’ knowledge about the subject matter. Secondly, qualitative data (inductive logic) was used to draw information from the surveys that could be used to build upon the theory (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). This way, we analyzed the surveys through a qualitative content analysis
4 Results and Discussion
We interviewed and administered surveys to a total of 93 basic-school teachers from the Guayubín School District (1302) in Montecristi province. To each teacher, the same questionnaire was provided, consisting of eight questions. The questions aimed at understanding the teachers’ knowledge regarding a) Indigenous people before Columbus, including their geographical distributions and political configurations; b) the frequency and the strategies they use to teach Indigenous history in the curriculum; c) the students’ interest in the Indigenous past; d) the teacher’s views of new and alternative knowledge compared to what they already know and teach; and e) their view of how researchers should present new information to make it accessible to them and their students. The following results highlight the main tendencies we have observed in the teachers’ answers based on our qualitative and quantitative data.
With the first question, we intended to assess the teacher’s existing knowledge regarding the political model of the five cacicazgos. The specific question was: “Briefly explain what you understand about the five-chiefdom model of the Indigenous Peoples of the past.” A total of 96% of the teachers provided an answer; these were divided into 7 categories (Table 3.1). Note that the number of responses does not equal the total number of participants, as some questions may be grouped under more than one theme. Therefore, the analysis is based on the number of responses, which in this case was 113, coming from 90 out of 93 participants. Regarding the categories, “TO” includes answers in which participants make general reference to the cacicazgos as an Indigenous means
Categories and replies for question #1
| Category | Number of answers | Percentage of answers |
|---|---|---|
| Form of territorial organization (TO) “Era una forma de organización que ellos utilizaban para dividir la isla, ya que no había una división socio-política.” |
29 | 26% |
| First form of territorial organization (FTO) “Primera división territorial de los primeros pobladores, osea de la isla.” |
14 | 12% |
| Form of power and/or leadership (PL) “Los cacizagos pertnenecían a los líderes que este caso era el cacique, quien a la vez era la máxima autoridad (una autoridad política).” |
41 | 36% |
| Form of social and political organization (SPO) “Estos son grupos indígenas del pasado con el propósito de una jerarquía política y social distintas.” |
10 | 9% |
| Form of territorial organization of the Taínos (TA) “La sociedad taína se dividían en cinco cacicazgo controlados. Ellos tenía control absoluto de todo.” |
6 | 5% |
| Cultural unit (CU) “Eran un grupo de cultura que vivían en chosa, que tenían su religión.” |
2 | 2% |
| Other (O) “Los indígenas fueron una pieza clave para el desarrollo de la agricultura pues cultivaban maís y yuca.” |
11 | 10% |
| Total | 113 | 100 |
These categories, in turn, can be combined into larger themes. For example, the TO, FTO, and TA categories (43% of answers) directly and often relate to the idea of territory, whereas the PL, SPO, and CU (47% of answers) are mostly oriented toward the notion of political organization. These answers are in line with the books of the fourth-grade social science course. For example, in one of the official social science books for grade 4 (Méndez Rosado & Aquino Guerrero, 2017), the five-cacicazgo map is introduced under the topic “Social and political organization.” Yet this book does not explain what a cacicazgo actually is. Other teaching resources (e.g., Gómez, 2003) more clearly present the fact that the cacicazgo refers to a social organization led by a cacique (the chief or king) and that these caciques had control over a territory. While the cacicazgo implies the idea of territory, it is in itself a term that refers to political organization. Nonetheless, we can state that most of the interviewed teachers had a good idea of what this term encompassed.
Most of the teachers (90/93) answered the second question, “Did you know that there were other Indigenous groups besides the Taíno?” Here, 69 (74%) indicated they were aware of the existence of other groups besides the Taíno, while 21 (23%) indicated they did not know. Of the 69 teachers who indicated that they knew other groups existed, 52 provided examples. Yet, of those 52, only 28 mentioned the actual names of one or more Indigenous groups that inhabited the island before or during the arrival of the Europeans. All basic-school books that mention the Indigenous people refer to some or all of these groups: the Taíno, Ciguayo, Arawak, Carib, Macorís, Siboney, and Ígneris. The groups that were mentioned most frequently in the answers were Arawak, Ígneris, Siboney, or some combination thereof; then, to a lesser degree, Ciguayo and Carib. It is noteworthy that none mentioned the “Macorís,” considering that this is the name of the supposedly Indigenous group that inhabited the region where the teachers live and work. Some of the teachers provided odd answers indicating terms such as “Indigenous,” “African,” “Spanish,” or “Subtaíno” The knowledge the teachers have and pass on to students comes from the basic-school books as well as the popular knowledge people exhibit in their daily lives. Both sources show the continued invisibilization of Indigenous groups homogenizing these communities under the generic umbrella term of “Taíno.” From schoolbook content to the teacher and student, the simplified version of how the first Spanish invaders observed and classified the
The third question, “How often do you include the idea of the political hierarchy of Indigenous groups in your classes to explain social dynamics?” was intended to better understand how frequently teachers presented their classes with information on the hierarchy of past Indigenous people in order to explain their ways of life. Their answers are summarized in Table 3.2. Most teachers indicated that they frequently or quite frequently talk about this political hierarchy (of cacicazgos and their territories) in their classes.
Range of responses to question #2
| Scale | Codes | Proportion |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Quite frequently | 27% |
| 2 | Frequently | 32% |
| 3 | Sometimes | 23% |
| 4 | Not frequently | 6% |
| 5 | Rarely | 12% |
| Total | 100% |
The fourth question was a multiple-choice one: “Do you believe that your students are interested in the following topics? Please indicate the options of your preference.” The predetermined options were “maps,” “Taíno,” “cultural territories,” “cultures of the past,” “caciques,” and “other.” With this question, we aimed to evaluate the students’ interest in these topics with a mind to using similar strategies to present and teach new models. The 93 interviewed teachers choose as follows: “maps,” 87; “Taíno,” 71; “cultural territories,” 78; “cultures of the past,” 83; “caciques,” 69; and “other, explain,” 23. Within this last category, the teachers elaborated to indicate: “national ephemera,” “cultural activities,” “museums,” and “school trips.” It was interesting, although not surprising, that they think students are most interested in maps. Besides the schoolbooks being full of maps, visual information is a simple yet powerful form of
The fifth question, “Indicate what educational resources are available for teaching your students about the influence of cacicazgos on the lives of the Indigenous Peoples the Spanish conquered?” also seeks to better understand the strategies teachers use in their classes and what works for the students. Here, we provided five categories and gave the teachers blank space to justify their answers. The categories with their quantitative values were: “photos,” 78; “educational tools,” 69; “internet,” 77; “archaeological artifacts,” 41; and “other, explain,” 36. Within the last category, the teachers included maps, crafts, museums, poems, and movies. Here, we observed that resources related to visual and technological information and school resources (e.g., books, school trips, etc.) were the most common.
The sixth question was: “What would you think if you were told that, in the past, there may have been another territorial configuration? For example, that there were no borders dividing Indigenous groups.” This question sought to investigate the teachers’ reactions to new knowledge, as well as the roots of their previous knowledge. We wanted to understand how they reflect on the cacicazgos and the Indigenous people. As in question #1, this was an open question, and the teachers’ answers were grouped into eight broad categories (Table 3.3). For this question, 83 out of the 93 interviewed teachers answered. “MTO” denotes answers referring to the cacicazgos and how Indigenous peoples were organized across the territory. “NMR” includes answers referring to the need for more scientific knowledge on the topic to confirm and validate the suggestion introduced in this question. “CU” includes answers that refer to the cacicazgos as a unit where the Indigenous people share the same cultural traditions. Usually, the answers in this category were off topic. “SC” includes answers in which the teacher makes clear reference to their interest in learning more about the topic, and requests that the specialists show and discuss their new findings. “LM” includes answers in which participants refer to their intention to investigate the validity of the new statements on their own. “AB” includes answers in which the absence of territorial borders is mentioned in relation to the cacicazgos as a means of territorial organization. “PB” includes answers in which the presence of territorial borders is related to the way cacicazgos functioned in organizing the territory. Finally, “O” includes answers that do not fit the above themes.
Categories and quantitative values of question #3
| Categories | Code | Total answers | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main form of territorial organization (MTO) “Según la historia que he leído sólo habían 5 territorios que aparecen especificados en el mapa y la extensión o porción de territorio que utilizaba cada cacique en su determinado cacicazgo.” |
MTO | 21 | 25 |
| Needs more research (NMR) “Se debe investigar más a fondo sobre las informaciones que tenemos ya que puedan aparacer otras informaciones que desconocemos.” |
NMR | 16 | 19 |
| Cultural unit (CU) “Cada grupo tenía sus intereses llegaba y se agrupaban de acuerdo a sus costumbres.” |
CU | 3 | 4 |
| Share new research findings with the school community (SC) “Creo que no sería sorprendente porque cada día se encuentran hallazgos que sorprenden a los historiadores y arqueólogos.” |
SC | 3 | 4 |
| Investigate to validate the veracity of new findings myself (LM) “Me dispodría a investigar más a fondo porque es posible que las informaciones proporcionadas hasta la actualidad no sean verídicas.” |
LM | 2 | 2 |
| Absence of territorial borders (AB) “Si no existieran fronteras la relación fuera mejor es decir un intercambio cultural.” |
AB | 12 | 14 |
| Presence of territorial borders (PB) “Me soprendería porque hasta ahora se me ha inculcado que los taínos sus caciques y los historiadores me lo han recalcado.” |
PB | 9 | 11 |
| Other (O) “[…] que era un pueblo que vivía en paz, que eran una raza pura.” |
O | 18 | 21 |
| Total responses | 84 | 100 |
From the teachers’ answers, it became evident that some either insisted that a new model was not possible or were skeptical toward it, while others were open
The seventh question, “If you were presented with alternative information on the configuration of the Indigenous chiefdoms, other than that of the five cacicazgos, do you believe that the presentation of a new map would be enough to teach the new model?” aimed to assess the teachers’ needs in accepting and integrating new interpretations into their lives and classrooms. All the teachers answered this question. A total of 27 teachers indicated that a new map would be enough, while 66 expressed that it would not be sufficient. Some of the teachers who provided a negative answer included comments indicating that they would need more information than just a map and that it should come in the form of lectures and updated school materials. They found it highly important that the new information be presented to them clearly and directly.
The final question was, “If you had the opportunity to teach your students about a new model for the cacicazgo territories, what kind of activities would you select from the list?” The list (Table 3.4) contained various options as well as a space to indicate others. With this question, we aimed at obtaining a better understanding of teachers’ needs regarding how they can present new knowledge to their students.
Categories and quantitative values for teachers’ answers to question #4
| Activity | Number of answers |
|---|---|
| Maps | 87 |
| Visits to important places | 81 |
| Museum visits | 84 |
| Replicas of archaeological materials | 54 |
| Stories | 54 |
| Community participation (e.g., videos of interviews with key people) | 74 |
| Literature (e.g., updated books) | 52 |
| Others | 31 |
5 Conclusion
With this paper, we aimed to present the first stage in a long-term effort to create a dialogue with primary-school teachers to discuss how the Dominican Republic’s social studies curriculum repeats and perpetuates biased colonial representations of past Indigenous people, and particularly how this has shaped their ideas of Indigenous people of both the past and present. To this end, we created a space to speak with and interview teachers from Montecristi province, first of all to provide them with a better understanding of the diverse and complex heritage of past Indigenous populations. Secondly, we designed interviews to find out how to present new information in a way that is not only respectful of people’s beliefs but also informs them about the historical distortions produced by colonization.
The eight questions provided a general picture of three main topics: 1) teachers’ knowledge about the Indigenous past (questions #1 to #3); 2) their teaching strategies (questions #4 and #5); and 3) their openness to new knowledge and the strategies to implement it (questions #6 to #8). Regarding the teachers’ knowledge, we learned that they have a good comprehension of what the term cacicazgo refers to. This was not a surprising find, since the idea of political hierarchy is one of the main points of national pride with regard to past Indigenous groups. Primary-school books highlight the importance of the Taíno being a hierarchical group and a complex society. However, the overemphasis on hierarchy contains an implicit evolutionary perspective by which the more complex the group, the better and more advanced the people. This is a bias rooted in the early Spanish colonial perspective, in which the Europeans
With regard to the teachers’ openness to new knowledge (questions #6 to #8), we were able to observe that only a little more than half of the teachers showed a clear indication of being either in favor of or against the introduction of potential new models. This is perhaps an indicator that this is not an essential aspect for half of the teachers, and they will accept any outcome. The other half was divided between those in favor of and those against the possibility of new models of explaining the past than they have learned. Yet, among both the “for” and “against” groups, it was clear that any potential new model would have to be presented with careful attention to how it is communicated. Biased colonial representations are profoundly embedded in people’s realities and their ideas of the past, and therefore it is essential to pair new archaeological and historical models with effective communication strategies. According to their answers, we could observe that presenting new visual materials, such as a new map of the distribution of the Indigenous groups, would have to go together with didactic materials such as books, lectures, and museum exhibits. Any new information would have to be discussed with the teachers, while also following the official channels: that is, it would come with the approval of the local, regional, and national education organizations.
The interviews have raised awareness of more appropriate scientific dissemination and public outreach strategies. We have been able to better understand the important role teachers play, especially by incorporating them into communication and decision processes while maintaining the official channels of the national education system. Thus, while all the new information replicates traditional forms of communication, such as teacher training, books and maps, talks, and school activities, it will be advantageous to generate new platforms with technological innovations such as online interactive courses, games, and virtual lectures, as well as school trips to key
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