Purpose
This information is intended to provide ethical considerations and general recommendations for educators, particularly those from non-Indigenous backgrounds, when teaching the topic of Indigenous enslavement. These guidelines come out of our project’s collaboration with tribal partners to develop educational content. They are not curricular recommendations, nor do they represent all Indigenous peoples’ views, as Indigenous communities are not a monolith. We hope they help you to ethically and thoughtfully approach this topic in your classroom. This is a living document that we will update and expand.
The content and structure of this document is inspired by “Writing About ‘Slavery’? This Might Help”
Please explore and familiarize yourself with our Resources for Educators in addition to reading this document.
Principles and Questions to Consider
- How was Indigenous enslavement part of a larger system of colonial conquest and land dispossession?
- What terms, phrases, and biases do the historical documents contain that may reduce, minimize, or alter Native identities and views of the world? (See our Decolonizing Statement.)
- How are the historical documents in this database enacting a form of erasure?
- How is erasure impacting Indigenous communities today, considering that the people described in these documents have living descendants?
Practices to Adopt
- Engage in self-reflective critique of your own and your students’ observations. Interrogate biases.
- Avoid projecting stereotypes and internalized biases about Native people onto the documents you’re reading.
- Avoid fictionalizing and generalizing Indigeneity. Although our project seeks to humanize the individuals represented in the database to the extent possible, speculating too much about their lives and identities opens the door for imposing one’s own assumptions.
Preferred Language
| Preferred Language | Language to Avoid |
|---|---|
| Enslaved person | Slave |
| Enslaver | Master, mistress, slave owner |
| Specific degrees of unfreedom, such as “indentured,” “captive” | Always saying “enslaved,” as not all stolen Indigenous people were enslaved |
| Self-emancipated | “Runaway” |
| Indigenous with the “I” capitalized | indigenous |
| Names of specific Indigenous nations, whenever possible.* See our tribal partners page for New England nations | Always using “Indigenous” or “Native” as a catchall term |
| “Tribe” if it is used in the official title of a specific nation* | “Native tribes” or “tribe” as a general term for an Indigenous community |
*Federally recognized tribes exist in a nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government as sovereign entities.