You have to weigh the information you get against the concerns of the native people. Some Indian tribes, as in Iowa, want to know more about their past and heritage as long as the remains are treated respectfully. But others don't want archaeologists digging around. These are issues that students need to explore and be aware of. We try to make them aware of all these ramifications.
Students also learn about alternative approaches to preserving and understanding history.
In one lecture, guest speaker Leonard Bruguier, director of the University of South Dakota American Indian Studies Program , explains the significance of the Native American tradition of oral history. At the University of South Dakota, archives in the Oral History Center contain more than 5,200 recorded interviews, many of them with Native Americans. Those voices are living pieces of history. And it's history that hasn't been filtered through another culture's beliefs or reinterpreted to fit in with someone else's agenda. When you study history in books you usually read about wars, but there was more to it than that.