Beginnings of Native American Studies in Germany

A Report on American Studies in Schools" (my translation), was not written primarily for philologists in American literature.It was addressed to educators wanting to teach about Native Americans in class, and motivated by my desire to help deconstruct "deutsche Indianertmelei" (or "German Indianthusiasm"), thus helping to facilitate the unlearning of racial stereotyping in German schools.It begins by explaining that in the 1970s there had been a resurgence of interest in so-called Indianer, ideologically undergirded by a widespread critique of U.S. imperialism in Vi t Nam and a growing solidarity with the Red Power movement in the United States.Having been myself an ardent "Indianthusiast" during childhood, my academic interest in Native Americans began with a review article, "Sitting Bull and Siegfried" for Kritikon Litterarum in 1975, followed by a second one in Amerikastudien / American Studies three years later.At that time, I did not even know that Native American studies (NAS) existed at some universities in the United States, but with the article discussed here, I began contributing to NAS myself.The scholarly discussion about how to introduce Native American studies as an academic inter-discipline in Europe did not occur in Germany until 1985 (Feest et al.).In 1975 and 1976, my students developed a questionnaire to find out what sixth-graders already knew about Native Americans and what they wanted to learn in addition for an extended interdisciplinary project, "Indianer in Nordamerika/North American Indians" (in English, social studies, and geography), which we taught at local schools near the University of Osnabrck (see Lutz, Hensel, et al. 5).After evaluating almost five hundred of these questionnaires, I was struck by the overarching

American studies · German · Ideology · Native american · Native American studies · Power (physics) · Racism · Solidarity · Asian American and Pacific Histories · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights