Stephen Silva Brave learned about the rivalry between “cowboys and Indians” and how Christopher Columbus discovered the new world growing up in Texas schools. But his teachers never discussed why the conflict occurred or how Columbus could have discovered the continent when there were already people living on it.
“When I was in school, I don’t think I really thought too much about it, but I knew it wasn’t right,” said Silva Brave, who is Sicangu Lakota and now has two children of his own attending the Grand Prairie school district.
Silva Brave’s grandmother would fill in the gaps with trips to visit family on the Rosebud Reservation and stories about her time in boarding schools and her path to Texas through the Indian Relocation Act.
He now hopes to share that deeper understanding with students across the state.
Silva Brave is part of a group of advisers creating a new American Indian/Native Studies course, an elective for Texas high schoolers that’s being piloted in Grand Prairie this year. District officials hope the State Board of Education will adopt standards for it, making it easier for all high schools to offer the curriculum.
It’s the latest ethnic studies class that will focus on the history and culture of a group that isn’t usually highlighted in state curriculum thoroughly. The SBOE adopted Mexican American Studies in 2018 and African American Studies not long after, setting the template for similar classes.
The new course comes at a time when Texas is embroiled in a debate over how history should be taught — and from whose perspective. The SBOE is rewriting standards for social studies classes across all grade levels and last year, legislators passed laws that restrict how teachers address current events and subjects like racism.
When the laws were signed by the governor and as elections further fanned the flames over what’s taught in the classroom, Silva Brave worried the Native studies course could be in jeopardy.
But at an April board meeting, SBOE members signaled their desire to move forward.
Grand Prairie school leaders were eager to develop a course that delves into Native American history and experiences.
“It means recognizing cultures, people that have felt invisible and have felt marginalized in the past,” said Lanette Aguero, who facilitates the district’s social studies program. “It helps to bring respect to [their] people and to share their stories.”
Developing the course
Annette Anderson’s kids were taught that most Natives were no longer in Texas even though her family would spend their weekends at local powwows or Native community gatherings. Anderson, who serves on the Council for the Indigenous Institute of the Americas, said one of her children eventually sought out an education in New Mexico to learn more about their culture.
So when Grand Prairie put out the call for input on how to teach a class focused on Native studies, Anderson was eager to help. She wanted to emphasize the presence of the community that exists today and combat stereotypes.
“They’d go to school and what they were being taught was that we were extinct, that there were no Indians in Texas [and] the ones that had been here were prehistoric people who were cannibals,” Anderson said. “There were all kinds of inaccurate pieces of information.”
Students should learn about Native contributions to science and technology, advisory members said. For example, many drugs used today are based on Native plants from North and South America and notable astronauts, doctors and scientists include those who are Native Americans.
Teens also should explore complicated issues around sovereignty — the right of tribes to govern themselves — which includes covering history, government and culture.
It was a challenge to distill such rich histories and cultures of the 574 federally recognized tribes into a single course, said Hawana Huwuni Townsley, who is a citizen of the Comanche Nation.
Advisers also didn’t want to focus only on the tribes based in Texas because citizens of various Native nations now live in the state, Huwuni said.
The way Native history is taught in many schools is stuck in the 1800s, she added, so it is especially important to teach modern-day contributions.
“I hope [students] walk away with the thought that there is so much more out there,” said Huwuni, adding that she hopes the course will inspire teens to keep learning about Native history and cultures.
Understanding different perspectives
Few school districts across the country offer specific lessons on American Indian/Native studies, said Kenneth Roemer, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas-Arlington who developed courses in Native American literature. Students often arrive in Roemer’s classes lacking historical context or background knowledge.
“We wanted to break away from [the stereotypes of] noble savage, savage savage, the vanishing Indian — that they were no longer there,” Roemer said.
Plus, students are growing up in a rapidly diversifying world, the professor added.
“The more they can learn about other people they are going to be with, the better,” Roemer said.
Many of the students who take the high school class will likely not identify as Native, Grand Prairie officials acknowledge. But Aguero, who oversees the district’s social studies, stressed the importance of reflecting diverse student perspectives in lessons.
“We learned history from ... the colonizers’ perspective and not so much from the voices of the people that were already here,” she said.
Huwuni offered an example of this from Oklahoma, where some schools were reenacting the Oklahoma Land Run, when settlers raced to stake their claim to land that Native Americans were already living on.
Schools seemed to be celebrating the historical event, Huwuni said, so students learned from the settlers’ perspective, not that of the tribes who lost their land.
Senior Jessica Long didn’t feel she had a great understanding of Native history before she enrolled in Grand Prairie High School’s Native course this semester.
“In regular history, they don’t really talk about the minority side,” Long said.
Long now knows about notable figures like Dan Akee, a Code Talker who enlisted during World War II. For a project, Long designed a fake Instagram profile for Akee, delving into his time in the military, struggles with alcohol and religious devotion.
Her classmates discussed the controversy of the Keystone Pipeline System and Native opposition to the northern project’s potential for damage on sacred land, pollution and health risks.
Long, who is Black, took African American Studies last semester to learn more about parts of her own culture that she didn’t understand because classes didn’t cover it. It opened her eyes to how much of history is defined by who writes it, she said.
“Even if you don’t identify as whatever group you’re learning about, it still helps you to empathize with what they’re going through and also you could be one of those activists to speak for them and raise awareness for their cause,” Long said.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
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