According to Vassar’s website, “The First-Year Writing Seminar introduces students to critical reading and persuasive writing at Vassar and helps them make the transition to college-level writing.” As last semester proved to me, that introductory experience varied wildly from person to person, friend to friend. At worst, first-year writing seminars were a burden: loathed, or at most tolerated, by the students in them, a graduation requirement and nothing more. But at their best, they were truly transformative: an introduction not only to college writing, but to the deeply enriching experiences that represent the very best of a liberal arts education. I was so lucky that my writing seminar with Professor Molly McGlennen fell into the latter group, and I could not have begun my academic experience at Vassar in any better way.
The course was entitled “Sending Smoke Signals: Representations and Realities of Contemporary Native America,” cross-listed between English and American Studies. As I was browsing through possible writing seminars last summer, the final sentence of its course description caught my attention: it promised to “guide [students] to think more deeply about the histories and contemporary realities of Native American nations and peoples — and the ethics and responsibilities that accompany that knowledge and engagement.”
Like anyone in America, I grew up seeing countless references to and representations of Native Americans: professional sports teams, place names, brand labels, and movies from Peter Pan to Pocahontas. Native iconography was everywhere, but the picture felt incomplete. That course description struck me because the “contemporary realities of Native American nations and peoples” were something I had never learned about, and I felt like I should have. I ranked the course highly in Ask Banner, excited by the idea of really diving into something new in college.
About a week ago, I stopped by Professor McGlennen’s office hours on Zoom. We talked for a little about the spring semester—what new classes I was taking, how I was liking Vassar—before I brought up “Sending Smoke Signals,” explaining the curiosity that led me to take it. And as she told me, my lack of knowledge was not unique. McGlennen has conducted informal surveys on her incoming first-years, as she explained: “Very few students come with any working knowledge of Native life, reality, laws, people, culture… What they do have is a lot of colonial baggage, a lot of misperceptions.”
“Now,” she continued, “being the smart Vassar student that you are, you all know that there’s something problematic about that… But you don’t have the language for it.” Combatting that “colonial baggage,” then, and building that necessary language, were central focuses of the course.
The United States, as all of us at least vaguely know, has a long history of prejudice against Native Americans. I remember learning as much in seventh-grade history. While we did spend some time in class reviewing that historical context, “Sending Smoke Signals” went a step further. McGlennen encouraged us to examine the ways non-Indigenous American society has viewed and treated images and ideas of Native Americans, and the ways that such depictions have been used as a foundation for American identity. The romanticization of America’s inception and its expansion West, the celebration of the pioneer and the cowboy, and the subsequent relegation of the Native to villain or sidekick all play a part in the distorted and harmful representations of Native Americans we see in the U.S. “Once you begin to see all the ways that that representation [of Native Americans] is wielded as a tool of dominance, as a weapon, it matters so much in understanding who you are…as Americans,” McGlennen said.
As we discussed these societal biases, or these “tool[s] of dominance,” we read, watched, and analyzed the work of many Native activists. What was especially impactful for me, though, was McGlennen’s discussion of her own activist work. She was part of the team that wrote Vassar’s land acknowledgement statement, adding phrasing about how Vassar has benefitted from Indigenous people’s displacement and fighting to add commitments to “build and sustain relationships with Native communities” and “expand opportunities at Vassar for Native students,” among others. She is also part of an effort to add a contextualizing statement to the piece of Plymouth Rock on display above the entrance to New England Building.
For McGlennen, this work is inseparable from her teaching. “I couldn’t do the work that I do successfully without doing the work of raising awareness around these issues, and also doing the work of making Vassar a more hospitable place for Indigenous people… It’s not service work, it’s what I do. It’s part of my intellectual life here.” Having a teacher so passionate about, and committed to, the subject material that she taught made classes that much more engaging and discussions that much more meaningful.
“Sending Smoke Signals” was a wonderful experience. The examination of culture, the reframing and challenging of the foundations of American identity, was at once mind-blowing and enriching; it was both an introduction to the rich complexity of college coursework and, most importantly, to the power that education has for social justice. It blurred the lines between academics and activism, forcing me to confront my own privileges and preconceived notions, and motivating me to be a more active agent for social justice in general on campus.
Beyond just social justice, though, I walked away from “Sending Smoke Signals” understanding clearly why Native Studies is so important. We all live and study in a country founded on Indigenous displacement. As McGlennen said: “Part of the responsibility of being a community member at Vassar is to know better your relationship to that settler-colonial history, how you’re a beneficiary of that, what Native peoples have to say about that, and how they can teach you something about it… I think it’s important, just as a thinking person in this world, to know that history.”
At a school that so publicly advertises its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, what could be more appropriate?