Surface    |    Backfill    |    About    |    Contact


29.9.07

Name an Indian Tribe

Dana Goldstein posted some of the questions from the revised US citizenship exam, among which is this one:

Name one American Indian tribe in the United States.


It would be interesting to see a chart of the answers given by applicants to #9 after that question has been in use for a while. I bet Cherokee and Navajo would be far and away the favorites.

Were I writing a test of "information it would be good for every US citizen to know," I would probably have made this question a bit more challenging and specific -- something like "Name (one of) the indigenous tribe(s)* that are native to the (county/state) where you live." Of course, a question like this would potentially invite a lot of controversy in terms of which tribes the exam-graders officially recognize as living where, and you'd inevitably get some Asatru follower suing to have them mark him correct for answering "white people." (My answers at various times would have been Erie, Susquehannock/Lenape borderland, Oneida, Nipmuc, and Tohono O'odham.)

*Since some indigenous groups in the US are not American Indians, e.g. native Hawaiians.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home