Lies My Teacher Told Me: Native American Narratives in Education

In this mixed-methods study, we use a postcolonial framework to investigate how state standards represent Indigenous histories and cultures. The research questions that guided this study include: (a) What is the frequency of Indigenous content (histories, cultures, current issues) covered in state-level U.S. history standards for K–12? (b) What is the difference between the frequency of inclusion of pre-1900 Indigenous content and post-1900 Indigenous content in U.S. history standards for K–12? (c) How do the standards depict Indigenous Peoples in U.S. history? U.S. history curriculum standards from all 50 states and the District of Columbia were analyzed using within-case analysis and quantified to represent each state’s depiction of Indigenous content. Findings reveal that standards overwhelmingly present Indigenous Peoples in a pre-1900 context and relegate the importance and presence of Indigenous Peoples to the distant past.

The article discusses teaching the history of Native Americans in K-12, and problematic and racist assumption associated with such a term as Native American, Indian, Indigenous, or Native. Topics include Native Americans in popular culture and mass media, their portrayal in motion pictures, non-native attitudes which group Native Americans into a single ethnic group, minorities and settler colonialism biases and stereotypes, and curriculum standards.