November 16, 2022
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Art, Culture, and Education: A Conversation with Choctaw Artist Kristin Gentry
Indigenous tribes and cultures are often misrepresented in both the media and curriculum of our classrooms. In this conversation, Choctaw Nation citizen Kristin Gentry provides insight on misconceptions of Indigenous people, educates on her Choctaw heritage, and provides pathways for educators on ways to enrich the education of students with accurate representations and historical information on Indigenous people.
Q: How does your Choctaw culture influence your art?
Kristin: Food sovereignty becomes a lot of my art, people understand food. I also use a lot of flowers. Flowers migrate. We were removed so some of those wildflowers migrated with us. On the surface it’s like ‘oh it’s florals it’s geometric patterning’. And I get to explain to people what things actually mean, like how we dance and how the direction we dance in reflects in how I design certain things. Like snake dances, rattlesnakes are important to Choctaw people and that’s why we have a diamond pattern on a lot of things.
Q: What are some misconceptions that you often see regarding Indigenous People?
Kristin: That we all are the same basic tribe. Even still today, people think we’re all extinct sometimes which is mind-blowing. I’m not sure how people think that in this day and age. People also think that we all look like how we were portrayed in southwestern movies, a lot of those actors were Italian and made to look “native”.
[*Note: In the United States negative stereotypes of Indigenous people have been common throughout the country’s history. These stereotypes have been most commonly portrayed in sports mascots such as, the Cleveland Guardians (formally known as the Cleveland Indians) using a caricature of Chief Wahoo and often referring to him as the “Drunken Indian”. These stereotypes and misrepresentations of Indigenous people were further represented in American media by non Indigenous actors, who were made to look “native”.]
Kristin: People still embrace racism, they still want those mascots. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts our children, or how much it hurts us into adulthood, and how we can directly look at you and tell you ‘that is hurtful to me’ and they don’t care to change it. They think it’s so important. Whatever the mascot, your team is not going to play any differently.
Q: How can media be used to support accurate teachings of Indigenous people?
Kristin: Reservation documentaries, having Indigenous directors, actors, writers. Not just having shows about us or having movies about us. It’s having us act, write, and direct those movies that’s how the media can support us. Let us represent ourselves and tell our stories.
Q: How do you feel about the quality of Indigenous history being taught in schools across America?
Kristin: I think it’s severely lacking. To have grown adults in 2022 thinking Native people are extinct in the United States is… It almost makes me cry in a way because it makes me so sad. To think that they think that little of us to think we’re not even people anymore. It’s hard to reconcile that within yourself to know that.
[*Note: Accurate information on Indigenous culture and history is missing in a majority of K-12 American classrooms. In PBS LearningMedia’s Missing Narratives: Uncovering Untold Histories lesson students have the opportunity to engage in a lesson encompassing accurate historical context regarding a tribe of Indigenous people.]
Kristin: I think any lesson that engages students and incorporates an authentic Indigenous citizen is beneficial.
Finding out the person in the video resources that goes with this lesson is actually a citizen of the tribe is helpful, you don’t find that a lot. There’s a lot of people whose grandparents have always told them that they’re part Native, and a lot of times unfortunately Cherokee is the tribe people tend to say a lot. That’s a lesson from us, so that alone is already doing better.
Q: If you could give an educator five tips about accurately educating their students on Indigenous cultures and people what would they be?
Kristin:
1. Figure out who’s land you’re on
There are a lot of resources you can use to figure out what tribe were the original inhabitants of the land your school is on in the country.
2. Find out what the tribes are of the children in your class
That's a great way for students to spend some time and learn about the different tribes. There might be Indigenous children from other parts of the world. There are Indigenous people in Japan, South America, and tons of places. Start helping students understand that Indigenous people are everywhere.”
3. Explore our media
You can look at the music, and compare the different types of music and pick various tribes and compare and contrast. You can check out what popular music there is today for native people versus traditional ceremony music. We have rappers, we have jazz artists and all the different genres of music. What contemporary native people are doing today is a great thing to look into.
4. Look at contemporary Native people
Seeing what contemporary native people are doing today. We’re in all of the career fields, and we’ve been here. John Herrington was the first Indigenous astronaut, learning these facts helps dispel misconceptions regardless of what grade level you’re teaching at. There are culture centers that you and your students can visit if your school has the funding, and virtual programs you can visit if your school doesn’t have the funding.
5. Voting
If your curriculum is lacking the education you can help supplement that. Teachers are of course going to be voting for education and looking for ways to enrich the education in their classrooms, but almost across all of America there are Indigenous students of some form in classrooms. Making sure they are supported through your curriculum can go a long way.”
Q: What do you think students or educators can unlearn/learn about the history of Thanksgiving?
Kristin: I think you can see the humanity of the actual Indigenous tribes in that story. Maybe learn what the tribe's name was and their history. They saw people starving and wanted to help, even though these were the people who were destroying their lives and all the tribes around them. Destroying their cultures, killing them, killing their children, raping and murdering their women, and yet they still had something in them to want to help them survive. I think that says a lot about where we were at as a people and where they were at as a people at that point in time.
Relearning what it actually all meant might be a way to actually be thankful for what we all have today.
Q: What would you say to those who don’t know Indigenous history past the colonization of the United States?
Kristin: “American history is a very tiny part of Indigenous history, and it’s going to be different from tribe to tribe. We have full government systems, we have societies, we have moieties, and we have thriving organizations. Even the United States modeled parts of systems used in America today after the Iroquois confederacy.
The colonists were seeking to escape England and France due to religious persecution, and to turn around and do exactly what they were escaping to us. Still today in the declaration of Independence it calls us “Merciless Indian savages”, but if you’re doing that oppression and murdering people wouldn’t you be the savage?
Kristin Gentry is passionate about using her art to create different ways to preserve her traditional Southeastern tribal culture. Kristin is a national award-winning artist. and has exhibited her art in numerous juried, invited, open, and group shows across the United States. She works as a professional visual artist in the areas of relief and monotype printmaking, painting, jewelry and photography. She also works as a writer, designer, and curator. She worked as a full-time arts educator in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and now works full-time at the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Kristin is an enrolled member and registered artist of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
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