North Dakota tribes Indigenize latest school textbooks

“It’s so important that Indigenous peoples are represented in a contemporary sense,” says Schettler, the assistant director of North Dakota’s Office of Indigenous and Multicultural Education. “Oftentimes it’s really kind of this fairy tale notion we’ve existed only in the past.”

It’s not uncommon for Native history in school texts to end with the so-called Indian Wars dwindling down in the late 1800s. And with the exception of Sacagawea — who guided the Lewis and Clark expedition to the west — most depictions show Native people as a threat to colonists to be defeated. Many texts make no further reference to the Indigenous people of the Americas, despite their high military enlistment rates in U.S. wars, the rise of Red Power during the late 1960s and early 1970s or their participation in other key events of the past few decades.

Schettler says this vacuum of information creates children who lack a full sense of history and who grow up with those same unchallenged notions as her college classmate.

“Then you have people getting elected into positions, and if you have somebody thinking that Indigenous peoples don’t exist, it’s just totally wrong,” she says. “They’re going to make policies that aren’t impacting our collective society.”

In August, a law went into effect in North Dakota requiring elementary and secondary schools to teach Native American history. The new curriculum, “Native Americans in North Dakota,” seeks to expand students’ knowledge of Indigenous people, including the fact they were present in the region at least 13,000 years ago.

As part of the curriculum, six eighth-grade textbooks are being released this month. Most are a mix of older content based on elder interviews from the 1970s and newer material added by local tribes. One — a book about the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate — is entirely new. Prepared by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and the state’s five tribal education departments, the books are intended to cover gaps in state history. They profile the history and culture of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, Spirit Lake Oyate, Standing Rock Oyate, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe and Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.

“We’ve spent the last couple years coordinating with each nation to revise their own textbook, just because they’re the world’s leading authority on themselves,” says Nick Asbury, a former DPI employee who has remained involved in promoting the textbooks.

The curriculum also includes a 155-page journal that gives a general overview of topics, including the reservation system, Congressional actions, and Native terminology. Standing Rock tribal member Cheryl Kary wrote the original “Journey to Understanding: An Introduction to North Dakota Tribes” for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.

“We found out that it was being also used by North Dakota studies teachers as an introductory manual to supplement — at that time four, now five — primary textbooks,” explains Asbury. “One on each nation. Because we saw the value in that, DPI went and approached Health and Human Services and got permission to update this to both of our benefit.”

The textbooks will be on every eighth grader’s desk in this academic year. They’re currently available now in ebook form, with printed editions coming out soon. For many North Dakota students, the curriculum will be their first exposure to Native history as shared by the Indigenous communities.

“Kids are smart,” says Asbury. “They know when something is authentic and when it’s not. Because they’ve grown up on the internet, they are very used to using those critical thinking skills to determine the validity of a source. Kids are pretty good at spotting when someone is telling a sanitized version of a story or spinning it to be more unobjectionable.”

Asbury says the roots of the textbooks — which have never been updated until now — date back 30 years to the late Cheryl Kulas, an Oglala Lakota tribal citizen and educator. From 1995 to 2002, she organized the publication of four tribal curriculum guidebooks. (Kulas died in March 2023 after an accomplished career that included serving as the DPI’s director of Indian education.)

The state government facilitated and funded grants for the series of textbooks, but editorial control was relegated to North Dakota’s tribes, tribal colleges and education departments. And the newly updated textbooks will be provided free to schools, so students get a contemporary outlook on the state’s Indigenous communities.

“My big joke is that I’m literally 31 and these haven’t been updated since then,” says Schettler. “I just think of how many things have happened over the last 30 years. So having authentically voiced representation and updated content to be delivered out to the districts is really important, not just for our Indigenous students, but for the entire state and all of our North Dakota citizens.”

Schettler says this representation gives Natives a seat at the table and will enable their voices to be better heard and give their issues deeper context.

For non-students who want to acquire an edition of “Journey to Understanding,” they can order it online through North Dakota State University. Printing is done through the United Tribes Technical College (spiral bound) or Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate College (paperback). The cost for a set of the six books is $72.

Readers will be able to access images, maps and trivia that will improve their knowledge of local tribes. UTTC president Leander McDonald wants this to be only the beginning.

“As you turn these pages,” he writes in the forward to “Journey of Understanding,” “I encourage you to go beyond the facts. Reflect on the stories, the struggles, and the successes of the Tribes of North Dakota. Let this book inspire you to continue your journey of understanding, empathy, and allyship with the Native communities that are an integral part of our shared history and future.”

Asbury says all middle and high schools in North Dakota will receive a classroom set of the books.