Social Studies Curricula: Interpreting and Using African Primary Source Documents

While many U.S. residents like listening to African stories, hearing African stories is difficult because designing effective curricula and teaching about African contexts appear to be a major challenge in U.S. social studies education. Drawing on postcolonial theory, we analyzed the discourses of two contemporaneous historical documents to demonstrate the complexities in meaning-making processes inherent in the indigenous Yoruba social practices in the southwestern part of Nigeria. Differential complex perspectives on Yoruba social practices are evident in both colonialist- and nativeauthored historical documents from the same time period, when colonialist authority had been established but indigenous cultural practices were evident and continuing. The colonialist-authored historical document indicates misunderstanding of the meaning of some Yoruba social practices. The native-authored historical document provides underlying meanings for social practices and ties portrayal of social practices to indigenous ways of being. The discussion calls attention to how colonial legacies influence meaning-making, meaning made from and knowledge made available by historical documents, as well as ways forward in addressing contemporary discourse on Africa in U.S. social studies curricula.