DWM vs. Native theater

I’m reading Bruce A. Goebel’s new book Reading Native American Literature to review on my blog. I’m sure I’ll be the first of all my friends to read it. What I’m struck by so far, and what I keep thinking about, is that this book evolved from Goebel’s literature classes where he made a point of introducing his students to Native lit. What this causes me to explore is the possibility of assigning more Native plays in my class and fewer of the white classics.
On the one hand, some of these things like Shakespeare and Oedipus Rex are read ad nauseum in American grade schools. And I understand why – a major purpose of schools is to train good citizens, and that means understanding the foundation texts of the culture. Here in the States, those texts are things like Shakespeare, the Greeks and Romans, and the Bible.
On the other hand, I have found that classes are really only useful to me when they encourage me to pursue my own projects, introduce me to useful new skills (like blogging and Youtube videoing, Phillip – thanks), or when they introduce me to interesting new literature or interesting new readings of old literature. One of the things that I do, and that I have an important insight into as a Karuk theater practitioner, is Native theater. This train of thought leads me to the opinion that putting two or three more Native plays on the syllabus next semester and dispensing with the works by DWMs that my students have read every year since kindergarten might be a really good thing to do.