ABSTRACT
Expectations that comprehensive music education includes all types of music have led to a situation in which musical diversity has become standard in music classrooms. Concomitant with these expectations is the requirement that the cultural contexts of music are also studied. These developments in music education have produced, however, a situation in which the ways music is taught may be at odds with the cultural contexts of the music in question. This disjuncture between expectation and practice is highlighted here in discussion of teaching through and about the musics of Native Americans. In that their musical characteristics and lyrical messages raise issues of post-colonialism, analysis of the position of these musics in music education acts as a form of post-colonial critique of music education, and is used to raise issues which relate to the teaching of music as a cultural artefact with political and social implications.
