HOMELAND - For Educators, Lesson Four

Broadcast Schedule

Lessons: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

LESSON FOUR: Saying You're Sorry

Standards | Lesson | Extensions | Resources

Topic

What does it mean to say you are sorry?

Age Group Grades 6-12

Learning Objectives

To consider the importance of apologies as part of the normal interaction among members of a community - a family, a school, a community, etc.
To learn that even political officials have chosen to apologize for actions, even actions for which they were not directly responsible.
To learn about the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
To learn about Australia's noteworthy attempt to involve an entire nation in saying it is sorry.
To compare and contrast two speeches for content and style.

Overview

What would happen if the President woke up one morning and went on television to give a speech saying he or she was personally sorry for all the bad things that had been done by the American government in the past? What if we told criminals that they would not have to go to jail if they were willing to admit what they did and say they were truly sorry? Does it mean anything to say "sorry" for wrongs that happened one hundred years ago? Is it insincere for us to put up a monument to remember Crazy Horse or Chief Joseph? Why did we put Sacajawea on the American dollar?

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was once a part of the Department of War and is now part of the Department of the Interior, is the formal link between the United States government and Indian nations. Recently a spokesman for the Bureau made a speech apologizing for past wrongs committed by the Bureau.

Standards

This lesson addresses the following national standards, established by McREL.

U.S. History

Grade 6
Understands elements of early western migration (e.g., the lure of the West and the reality of life on the frontier; motivations of various settlers; Mormon contributions to the settlement of the West; differences in the settlement of California and Oregon in the late 1840s and 1850s; routes taken by settlers of the Western U.S.; interactions between settlers and Native Americans and Mexicans in the western territories)

Understands contemporary issues concerning gender and ethnicity (e.g., the range of women's organizations, the changing goals of the women's movement, and the issues currently dividing women; issues involving justice and common welfare; how interest groups attempted to achieve their goals of equality and justice; how African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native Americans have shaped American life and retained their cultural heritage)

Grades 7-8
Understands how early state and federal policy influenced various Native American tribes (e.g., survival strategies of Native Americans, environmental differences between Native American homelands and resettlement areas, the Black Hawk War and removal policies in the Old Northwest)

Understands characteristics of life on the western frontier in the 19th century (e.g., cultural interactions between diverse groups in the trans-Mississippi region, how the Mormons established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and their communities)

Understands interaction between Native Americans and white society (e.g., the attitudes and policies of government officials, the U.S. Army, missionaries, and settlers toward Native Americans; the provisions and effects of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 on tribal identity, land ownership and assimilation; the legacy of the 19th century federal Indian policy; Native American responses to increased white settlement, mining activities, and railroad construction)

Understands how different groups attempted to achieve their goals (e.g., the grievances of racial and ethnic minorities and their reference to the nation's charter documents to rectify past injustices, local community efforts to adapt facilities for the disabled)

Grades 9-12
Understands shifts in federal and state policy toward Native Americans in the first half of the 19th century (e.g., arguments for and against removal policy, changing policies from assimilation to removal and isolation after 1825)

Understands significant religious, cultural, and social changes in the American West (e.g., the degree to which political democracy influenced social and political conditions on the frontier, cultural characteristics of diverse groups, the impact of the Second Great Awakening and religious revivals on Mormon migration to the West, the lives of women in the West)

Understands influences on and perspectives of Native American life in the late 19th century (e.g., how the admission of new western states affected relations between the United States and Native American societies; leadership and values of Native American leaders; depiction of Native Americans and whites by 19th century artists)

Understands major contemporary social issues and the groups involved (e.g., the current debate over affirmative action and to what degree affirmative action policies have reached their goals; the evolution of government support for the rights of the disabled; the emergence of the Gay Liberation Movement and civil rights of gay Americans; continuing debates over multiculturalism, bilingual education, and group identity and rights vs. individual rights and identity; successes and failures of the modern feminist movement)

Language Arts

Grades 6-8
Uses reading skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts (e.g., textbooks; biographical sketches; letters; diaries; directions; procedures; magazines; essays; primary source historical documents; editorials; news stories; periodicals; bus routes; catalogs; technical directions; consumer, workplace, and public documents)

Summarizes and paraphrases information in texts (e.g., arranges information in chronological, logical, or sequential order; conveys main ideas, critical details, and underlying meaning; uses own words or quoted materials; preserves author's perspective and voice)

Understands techniques used to convey viewpoint (e.g., word choice, language structure, context)

Grades 9-12
Analyzes techniques (e.g., language, organization, tone, context) used to convey viewpoints or impressions (e.g., sarcasm, criticism, praise, affection)

Uses a variety of criteria to evaluate the clarity and accuracy of information (e.g., author's bias, use of persuasive strategies, consistency, clarity of purpose, effectiveness of organizational pattern, logic of arguments, reasoning, expertise of author, propaganda techniques, authenticity, appeal to friendly or hostile audience, faulty modes of persuasion)

Uses text features and elements to support inferences and generalizations about information (e.g., vocabulary, structure, evidence, expository structure, format, use of language, arguments used)

Civics

Grades 6-8
Understands how politics enables people with differing ideas to reach binding agreements (e.g., presenting information and evidence, stating arguments, negotiating, compromising, voting)

Understands competing ideas about the purposes government should serve (e.g., whether government should protect individual rights, promote the common good, provide economic security, mold the character of citizens, promote a particular religion)

Knows major conflicts in American society that have arisen from diversity (e.g., North/South conflict; conflict about land, suffrage, and other rights of Native Americans; Catholic/Protestant conflicts in the nineteenth century; conflict about civil rights of minorities and women; present day ethnic conflict in urban settings)

Understands the impact that other nations' ideas about rights have had on the United States (e.g., natural rights in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, social and economic rights in the twentieth century)

Understands the impact that current political developments around the world have on the United States (e.g., conflicts within and among other nations, efforts to establish democratic governments)

Grades 9-12
Understands how politics enables a group of people with varying opinions and/or interests to reach collective decisions, influence decisions, and accomplish goals that they could not reach as individuals (e.g., managing the distribution of resources, allocating benefits and burdens, managing conflicts)

Understands some of the major competing ideas about the purposes of politics and government (e.g., achieving a religious vision, glorifying the state, enhancing economic prosperity, providing for a nation's security), and knows examples of past and present governments that serve these purposes

Understands how the purposes served by a government affect relationships between the individual and government and between government and society as a whole (e.g., the purpose of promoting a religious vision of what society should be like may require a government to restrict individual thought and actions, and place strict controls on the whole of the society)

Knows examples of conflicts stemming from diversity, and understands how some conflicts have been managed and why some of them have not yet been successfully resolved

Knows why constitutional values and principles must be adhered to when managing conflicts over diversity

Understands issues that involve conflicts among fundamental values and principles such as the conflict between liberty and authority

Behavioral Studies

Grades 6-8
Understands that each culture has distinctive patterns of behavior that are usually practiced by most of the people who grow up in it

Grades 9-12
Understands that cultural beliefs strongly influence the values and behavior of the people who grow up in the culture, often without their being fully aware of it, and that people have different responses to these influences

Understands that heredity, culture, and personal experience interact in shaping human behavior, and that the relative importance of these influences is not clear in most circumstances

Understands that family, gender, ethnicity, nationality, institutional affiliations, socioeconomic status, and other group and cultural influences contribute to the shaping of a person's identity

Lesson Four: Saying You're Sorry

Day 1 (40 min.): Engage the class in an age-appropriate discussion of apologies, what they mean, why we do them, and what purposes they serve. Ask students to think of times when they have received apologies that seemed insincere or inappropriate. If a child breaks another child's toy is it appropriate for the mother to offer an apology? If your dog ruins the neighbor's garden, should you apologize? Can a drunk driver apologize to a family for killing their son? Is it ever too late to apologize?

Introduce the Bureau of Indian Affairs (see HOMELAND website Timeline Bureau of Indian Affairs) and explain its function. Have the class read and discuss this recent apology by Kevin Gover, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior.

This is from a speech Gover made on September 8, 2000, at the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

...I stand before you as the leader of an institution that in the past has committed acts so terrible that they infect, diminish, and destroy the lives of Indian people decades later, generations later. These things occurred despite the efforts of many good people with good hearts who sought to prevent them. These wrongs must be acknowledged if the healing is to begin. And while the BIA employees of today did not commit these wrongs, we acknowledge that the institution we serve did. We accept this inheritance, this legacy of racism and inhumanity.

And by accepting this legacy, we accept also the moral responsibility of putting things right.

I do not speak today for the United States. That is the province of the nation's elected leaders, and I would not presume to speak on their behalf. I am empowered, however, to speak on behalf of this agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I am quite certain that the words that follow reflect the hearts of its 10,000 employees.

Let us begin by expressing our profound sorrow for what this agency has done in the past. Just like you, when we think of these misdeeds and their tragic consequences, our hearts break and our grief is as pure and complete as yours. We desperately wish that we could change this history, but of course we cannot. On behalf of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, I extend this formal apology to Indian people for the historical conduct of this agency.

Website with the complete speech by Kevin Gover, September 8, 2000

Have the class evaluate this apology in terms of its meaning, its sincerity and its purpose. Is he believable when he says he speaks for the agency? Is he believable when he says he speaks for 10,000 employees?

Day 2 (40 min.): Australia has had a similar history in its treatment of the local population whom they call Aborigines. In 1992 Australia's Prime Minister Paul Keating offered an apology and called for a commission to study the problems caused by ill treatment of the Aborigines. Here is a shortened version of the speech:

Prime Minister Paul Keating

In truth, we cannot confidently say that we have succeeded as we would like to have succeeded if we have not managed to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia ...

This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy...

It is a test of our self-knowledge. Of how well we know the land we live in. How well we know our history. How well we recognize the fact that, complex as our contemporary identity is, it cannot be separated from Aboriginal Australia

...More I think than most Australians recognize, the plight of Aboriginal Australians affects us all.

We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not. There should be no mistake about this - our success in resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on our standing in the world.

That seems to me not only morally indefensible, but bad history.

We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us. Didn't Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia? Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkably harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians - the people to whom the most injustice has been done.

And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognize that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.

It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practiced discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?

As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.

... Perhaps when we recognize what we have in common we will see the things which must be done - the practical things.

...The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include indigenous Australians.

There is everything to gain.

There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through 50,000 years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation.

We cannot imagine that.

We cannot imagine that we will fail.

I am confident that we will succeed in this decade.

Web site with the whole speech, a little long, but very readable

The Commission recommended that a National Sorry Day should be declared and the first National Sorry Day was held in Australia on 26 May 1998 - to recognize the pain caused to aboriginal families whose children had been removed from their homes. Support for Sorry Day was widespread. Not only did the vast majority of Australians vote to create the day, but additional events have been held and books have circulated in every community where individuals can write their personal messages. These books will become a permanent archive in which individual citizens can record their feelings.

Homework: Ask students to compare and contrast the speech from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the one by Australia's Prime Minister. How are they the same? Are there any significant differences in the speeches? Are there significant differences in the treatment of Native peoples in the United States and Australia? Do students think that the Prime Minister's speech and the success of Australia's Sorry Day influenced the head of the Bureau to make such a speech? If so, does that make his speech less valuable?

Extended activities

Ask students to research the original Sorry Day
Invite students to design a poster or pamphlet for an American Sorry Day.
Is "Sorry Day" a good name, what might be a better one?
Debate the value for the United States of a National "Sorry Day."
Discuss whether the new president is likely to call for a "Sorry Day."

Resources

HOMELAND Timeline Bureau of Indian Affairs

Sorry Day

Roadmap for Reconciliation

Frontier: Stories from White Australia's Forgotten War

A Site for Secondary teachers on the Aborigines of Australia