Innovative Class Links Native American and Jewish Resistance

At the Fort Washakie School, on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, Librarian and Film-maker Robin Levin teaches “Responses to Genocide”, a high-school class which ties the cultural history of her mostly Native American students to the life lessons of the Jewish partisans.

Robin uses Teaching with Defiance in concert with her documentary, Taken From My Home: Indian Boarding Schools in Perspective, Told by Teenagers Who Lived Through the Unthinkable, and many other resources, including interviews from both boarding school survivors and former Jewish partisans. She plans to show excerpts from these interviews for "Defying Genocide", a community-wide Days of Remembrance ceremony on May 3, 2011 at the Lander Public Library in Fremont County, WY.

Robin says that common threads can be drawn in understanding the ways that dominant societies set out to victimize groups in their midst and that, for her students, the parallels to the Jewish experience in the Holocaust are obvious: “Every native student alive today is a survivor. The connection is intuitive, it’s there. They know that the cavalry mowed down their forebears; they know that their relations suffered forced marches and starvation and relocation and dehumanization. Yet here they are today, victorious: they’re still here and still identifying themselves as a member of a tribe, a family, and clan.” She notes that studying the Jewish partisans also gives her students a sense of hope, "Every story of survival is an actual miracle.”

Robin starts her course with a discussion of the U.N. definition of genocide. The students then study Ishmael Beah's book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and the related film The Storytelling Class, and discuss whether or not the book’s circumstances can “technically” be considered genocide. The class then moves on to the Holocaust and Jewish resistance, focusing on the film Defiance and JPEF's accompanying curriculum. She concludes the course with the history of the Indian Boarding Schools, and the actions that helped end them. This gives the students an opportunity to “bring their own family stories into the loop” using curricula she developed to accompany Taken From My Home. Robin notes that the Indian Boarding School movement clearly falls within the U.N. definition of genocide: destroying the cultural identity of a group, taking them from their home, refusing them their language, clothing expression, games, and song and, under extreme duress, forcibly imposing Euro-American values.

Robin shared several tips for using the Jewish partisans in the classroom, starting with the film Defiance which, she says, leaves her students "breathless; at the end of the film, their reaction is, 'oh that was awesome.'" She stresses the importance of watching the entire film, Defiance, breaking when needed but taking as long as it takes over several class sessions to see the entire movie and hone in on issues of greatest interest to the students. She also suggests using testimonials from surviving partisans to present an active voice in reinforcing messages of the film.

Robin laminated several copies of JPEF's Faye Schulman “Pictures of Resistance” poster (available from JPEF), which she passes out to her students, asking them to describe what they see: who the people pictured in the poster are, how they seem to function together and what their responsibilities were, during both peaceful moments as well as during warfare.

She concludes her segment on the partisans by assigning the students a creative project -- a poem, drawing, home design -- that the student develops as a “gift” for a partisan, designed to meet a need of theirs in either his or her past, present, or future. Levin explains, “Don’t dictate what to expect. If the students says, 'I can’t do anything', then ask what could this person could do for you, if you were in need.”

For more information about the Taken From My Home DVD and curriculum, click on the "store" link at www.fascinatinglearningfactory.org or email robinlevin@gmail.com.