NATIVEAM 310: Stereotypes and Native Languages is a Native American Studies and the Social Sciences course that explores how stereotypes about Indigenous communities affect how their languages are perceived and analyzed. The class fulfills the LSA social sciences distribution requirement and is cross-listed as AMCULT 310: Topics in Ethnic Studies and LING 303: Social Science Topics in Linguistics.

Cherry Meyer, Native American studies assistant professor, is currently teaching the course. Meyer said the main goal of the course is to investigate how misunderstandings about Native American culture can change how Indigenous languages are researched and evaluated in an interview with The Michigan Daily. 

The broader goal is just to get people exposed to Native histories and cultures and debunk these myths or these stereotypes that exist,” Meyer said. “For a lot of students, they have never had any education whatsoever about Natives in our country, which is egregious.”

The course includes learning about social and political processes that have affected Indigenous people in the past, such as language policies and residential schools, as well as technical features like the structure and systems of different Indigenous languages. 

“We talk about how Native American languages enrich our understanding of language,” Meyer said. “So we talk about things like noun incorporation and like the grammatical gender … and like word order and word building processes. A lot of people only speak English, and so thinking about the way that other languages structure concepts can be very interesting.”

LSA senior Abigail Kohn told The Daily that she was motivated to take the course because she is a non-Indigenous person who grew up on colonized land, so she wanted to learn more about Indigenous language and language revitalization. 

“I grew up in Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the history of residential schools, or even of indigenous removal from this land, was never talked about,” Kohn said. “So to hear that residential schools caused all this horrifying trauma so close to home and that it still was never taught about, and people were never educated on that, wasn’t exactly shocking, but it was definitely something that I’m glad that I learned about more now.”

Kohn explained that, while language analysis is the main focus of the course, there are sociopolitical elements to it as well. 

“I took this class because I’m interested in linguistics, so I was very much approaching it from a ‘Oh, I wonder how this language works’ perspective’,” Kohn said. “But then to hear both about the way that Indigenous languages are seen by settlers, by non-Indigenous people, and then also to see the language that the Western world uses in English to describe Native people, made me realize how much more connected those ideas are than I would have necessarily thought originally.”

LSA junior Matt Briskey also took the course and told The Daily that it expanded his perspectives about Native American culture. 

“My wife last year was working in the (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program) program, and she started to talk to me about the idea of colonization of Indigenous people in America, and just what a problem that it was and still is today,” Briskey said. “So when I saw that this class was available, I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the culture.”

Meyer said the intersection between language and culture is important to understanding how we perceive the world and others around us, especially in the context of colonization where the history of Indigenous people is often overlooked. 

“I didn’t know that the course would kind of turn into what it is, which is just drawing people in and getting them some kind of exposure to Native American cultures,” Meyer said. “They’re not given a lot of attention or value or importance, and so showing how language is so vital to culture and identity and health and well being, I think, really opens people’s eyes to what has been done to Native cultures and how we need to fix that.” 

Daily News Contributor Sophie Frank can be reached at sophieaf@umich.edu.