(NAME-MCE) Internet PE Lesson: Cowboys and Indians

[Veltkamp, Teresa]

Biases about American Indian people are ubiquitous in literature, games and modern media. Many American people will fondly remember playing "Cowboys and Indians"  in their youth and think of it as an innocent children's game, though it was based on the de-humanizing Hollywood stereotypes that continue to limit American Indians today.

Mr. Gym, a physical education website, has listed Cowboys and Indians  under the heading "tag/chase/flee games," though there is also a somewhat oxymoronic heading called "combative/soft war" that might be a better fit. In this game, the Indians sneak up on the cowboys and must be chased back on to the reservation. Then the cowboys are chased by the Indians (off the reservation? Back to the fort? We aren't told.)
The simple game is almost elegant in its easy, insidious perpetuation of multiple stereotypes. A child playing this game begins with the mistaken (and probably unspoken) assumptions that American Indians are sneaky, that they ought to be contained on reservations, that animosity between white people and "hostile" Indians is the natural order of things, that racial divisions are an appropriate way to divide loyalties...

http://www.mrgym.com/Tag/CowboysInd.htm

At least there's no scalping.

For those interested in integrating authentic, accurate information about American Indians into the physical education curriculum, please check out lesson plans at  http://opi.mt.gov/PDF/IndianEd/Search/Health%20Enhancement/ or purchase equipment at  http://www.traditionalnativegames.org/index.html


Teresa Veltkamp
Indian Education Implementation Specialist
Montana Office of Public Instruction, Helena MT
(406)444-0726
tveltkamp at mt.gov