Policy education/testing reinforces colonialism and is the telling hegemonic histories.

As human beings, we can always look on the past, examine the present, and prepare for the future of humanity by sharing our cultural stories. In public school I was taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America. Later, I found out that the man was totally lost on his voyage and named the Indigenous Peoples he "discovered" Indios because he was looking for the country of India. Throughout my entire public school education, I was led to believe by my teachers that this was a true story. The year 1492 seems to have triggered the "Western world" mythology that has come to dominate the entire globe's economics, politics, and academics, imposing itself as the natural, unquestionable norm of human existence. "This illusion of Western world superiority has functioned implicitly, and at times brutally explicitly, to facilitate the conquest and enslavement of native peoples, the exploitation of their labor and the natural resources, and the genocidal destruction of whole cultures and peoples" (Tinker 1993, p. vii). It is not simply that Columbus is identified as the one who started it all, but rather that he has come to represent a huge legacy of suffering and destruction (Smith 1999). He sets this modern framework of 500 years of colonization of the Indigenous Peoples of North America and defines the outer limits of that legacy, which is the total destruction of Indigenous culture. Lasting awareness—that in-depth understanding which penetrates the superficial differences or similarities between fact, theory, and practice, that level of consciousness which allows you to see the truth no matter how bitter, horrible, or controversial—often comes about gradually. Given my introduction to the 1492 Columbus story, I look back on elementary school, junior high, high school, and university classes that were designed to help me become a knowledgeable student, teacher, counselor, and principal. I see now that the American educational system promotes a system-maintaining curriculum. By that, I mean it virtually designs hegemonic class structures, which just about guarantees that the oppressed remain oppressed and the oppressors remain oppressors (Freire 1993). Some colleagues will say to me that school is what you make of it—that students have choices. I say that the American system of education is charged to make something distinct of us. Therefore, the title of this paper "Renaming Ourselves on Our Own Terms" is like counting coup1 on the text.